I finished Deep Purple, and yes, I did it my way, again.  Actually, I finished it last month and have worn it twice, already.

Here’s the scoop on finishing it up.  The original Vogue pattern calls for a simple back done in one piece of plain stockinette stitch.  I decide two knit the back in two pieces so that I’d have an excuse to put a snap closure down the center of the back.

After knitting (and blocking) the two pieces I joined the pieces to the front using the simple mattress stitch for a quick clean join at the sides and shoulders. I picked up the edges for the arms and worked a few rows for the small sleeve edgings and then I picked up stitches around the neck and worked a few ribbed rows for the neck edge. I picked up edge stitches along the two back pieces and worked a few ribbed rows to prepare for the snap closure. Then I added the snaps. I still suck at taking pictures as you may have noticed, so I thought I’d record my actions using the time-lapse feature on my iPad and then share it as a video.  BTW – I always measure the length of the piece before adding snaps to it.  I do a little quick math to find how many snaps I can place equally between the top and bottom edges and then do a dry fit by placing the snaps on top of the fabric without hammering them in.  On Deep purple, I found that I needed twice as many snaps as I had anticipated.  It’s a good thing I have tons of snaps on hand all the time.  Here’s how I added the snaps.  Enjoy…and check out my next project!

So this project is the reason that I put off writing about Deep Purple.  It looks a little weird here. It is the beginning a cardigan knit from the bottom up.  It actually starts with the cabled cummerbund waist and then I picked up stitches along both long sides to create the ribbed edge and the ribbed body with placed cables.  When I picked up stitches for the body I wasn’t paying attention and the ribbing was on the wrong side.  Whoops!  I only had to rip out two rows before I noticed what happened.