Dragon Vest

The Dragon Vest, created for artist friend William Stout, who paints both dragons and dinosaurs (among other things), and knitted of handspun black and white South American alpaca, is another FHF original. Knitted in linen stitch and stockinette jacquard and duplicating in size and shape a black leather vest owned by the artist, the vest has embedded in its back a design of fire-breathing dragons adapted from the book The Tap-Dancing Lizard by Catherine Cartwright-Jones and Roy Jones. The dragons were knitted in stockinette jacquard, on size 2 needles, while the bottom, sides and top of the back were knitted in linen stitch on size 3 needles--a concept whose ultimate success was unknown until the vest was finished and blocked. The closures, which are fossil shark teeth, the closest I could come to "dragon's teeth", hark back to the artist's interest in prehistoric creatures. The background pillows are handknit using commercial yarn from designs in Vogue Knitting on the Go: Pillows.