One more long term project completed!

It is a very pleasant thing when you hope to do something and you accomplish it within a reasonable amount of time.

I mentioned in my last blog post that I would like to do something about two sewing projects that are lying around, crying out to get picked up again, and a green top that needed very little to go from 95% to all done!

And here it is, I've done it!  (It 'only' took ten months):



My Green Summer Lace Sleeve Top (Ravelry)



I will post a better picture as soon as the top is finished blocking.  All the other pictures I took are rather fuzzy: I hadn't discovered the macro setting on my photo camera yet (isn't it wonderful that you learn something new every so often?) so no wonder...

My photography skills improved considerably since.

I could have waited for this top to dry but couldn't contain myself. Best strike while the iron is hot.

The details:

Yarn	Debbie Bliss Prima (half strand)
Needles	3.25 mm (I think)
Pattern	made up as I went along
Source	lace patterns from Harmony stitch books

I wrote about my madness in wanting to knit this in a different weight than the yarn provides for (Splitting matters).  I am very pleased with the effect.  The only thing is that I should have paid more attention to the dye lots - I got 100g in a different dye lot and managed to introduce stripes across the top part of the garment.  That was completely unintentional and doesn't look interesting enough for me to get away with pretending that it is part of the design.

My solution to any kind of design problem: do something to make it look as if it was always meant to look this way.  I can't come up with anything in this case though.  I thought of embroidering some wavey lines over the stripes but I think that would make it look worse.  So far the stripes are relatively subtle, this is preferable to any 'solution' I can think of. Best leave things as they are instead of messing this up with an "improvement".

The sleeves were meant to be much more flared - possibly gathered at the top (at the shoulders) and then flaring like wings over the top part of the arm.  They didn't work out like that.  I still only attached them at the top half of the armholes which left the bottom half quite unfinished looking: the edges were a little raw and way too loose too.

I used buttonhole stitch to edge the open armholes, something like this:


buttonhole stitch

Or to show the detail a little better, only closer spaced together than this:


Also called blanket stitch

I tried to get these stitches as even as possible, but it could do with a bit of elastic thread to prevent the armhole curve from being too floppy.

The bind-off edging is my own design.  It is a sort of flared edge with picot details.  As soon as I can put my hand on my notes, I will blog about this.  I made up my own thing here because I wanted to avoid this from becoming too tight and rigid as happens when you bind off in the normal manner.

I do like very plain hems.  The yarn is 80% bamboo and 20% merino, so the hem (long tail cast-on, one row purl stitch and then stockinette), does not roll up quite as much as it could, - but it still does.

A turned ridge hem would have been better. Or I'll need to sew a fabric facing to the inside if the curling up remains a problem.