I made this vest/top back in 2006:

The yarn is a particularly soft and luscious cotton. I had just enough to make the vest. My, er, assets were a size smaller back then, and the bottom of the ribbing was at about waist height.

Time passes. Bodies change. The vest has been too short for a while now, and while I can wear it with something beneath, generally I don’t wear fests unless I need warmth, and then I don’t want a chilly gap around my waist.

I haven’t knitted beyond finishing machine knitted garments and the occasional accessory for (yikes!) ten years. A while back I bought some cotton from the Great Ocean Road Woolen Mill that had the same softness, and it occurred to me later that I could use it to lengthen the vest. Recently I finally got around to it.

The process was slow and laborious. I put in a thread just above the ribbing, then one several rows below to reduce the band width, cut and unravelled the yarn. Then I slowly knitted the simple pattern bands. I only dared to knit a few rows at a time, every two or three days, in case my rsi flared up. Even so, my back was not happy with me looking down so much.

After several weeks I had the pattern section complete. I needed to unravel a bit more of the body to end the pattern in a balanced way. Then halfway through Kitchenering the top to the bottom I discovered that there were increases in the extra section I’d unravelled, so I had to pull the stitches out and add the increases before restarting the joining.

So when I finally finished, I was very relieved that the vest still fit, and the ribbing meets the waistband of my jeans and skirts.