Knit. . . Milo vest two different ways.

Milo made from handspun merino, silk and Romney

Have you ever come across the Milo vest by Australian knit-designer Georgie Hallam, a.k.a. "Tikki"? It's an extremely versatile pattern and covers a range of sizes, from newborn to 6 years (and beyond if you play around with different yarn choices and/or have a particularly slim child). If you are not familiar with the Milo, I really recommend you check it out - in fact, try anything designed by Georgie Hallam and you won't go wrong! All her designs are test knit many times over and the patterns are very clearly presented. Her blog is here and both free patterns and a "paid pattern" section are available over there as well as ravelry. There's a May Milo KAL (knitalong) on the "Tikki Love" group on ravelry at the moment, and I was helpless to resist! I have finished knitting two Milo vests in the last week.

 First up, a 3 month size handspun Milo vest using yarn I spun by hand back in the early days of  my spinning adventure - a couple of years ago. It is an absurd mixture of coloured silk and merino (soft as a cloud) with white Romney (coarse and durable), which looks nice but is quite "rustic" to the touch! I didn't know in those days that I would have been better off mixing soft wool with soft wool, nor did I even know that Romney was coarse! Not sure who this vest will be for, but as long as it is worn over a bodysuit or other long sleeved top it will be just fine. I love the colours, and they somehow remind me of a misty lakeside in Scotland or New Zealand.

For my next Milo, I decided to branch out and do a spot of embellishment using a chart from the Digger Jacket by Sam Godden. That pattern was originally published in a UK knitting magazine, but is now available by email. The charts for the construction vehicles were almost illegible in the black and white .pdf I received, so I set about recreating a digger chart using photos of the finished Digger jacket on ravelry. This is the result. . .

Above and below you can see how the chart looked once I had Swiss darned/duplicate stitched it onto the Digger Milo vest, and outlined it with grey chain stitch.

I missed out the cable panel and did stocking stitch for the whole body until the garter stitch border, in order to allow a blank canvas for the digger and mud. The last 10 rows of the stocking stitch section are knitted in "mud" colour, and then I embroidered the hole and the mud piles as well as the digger. This Milo vest is for a certain little boy who turns three years old next week. His mum says he loves diggers, so I hope he likes it :-) 

I got a lovely comment on ravelry about this Digger Milo from Tikki/Georgie Hallam, designer of the Milo vest. It went something like this: "LOVE LOVE LOVE!!! (1000) My son would love love love this too!" So that made my day :-) and made me love Georgie's designs even more!