Thick and thin blue summer top

I finished this in January 2011 but actually forgot to blog up. Here's the Ravelry link for anyone interested in the yarny details etc: Blue summer top.

Another project that finally made it from 95% to all done:

I tightened up the thread a bit more on the left hand side then the other when I sewed it up.  I will do that as well with a bit of spare thread to even things out on the other side.  When I get round to it...

Closer-up shots of the details:

If you don't have access to Ravelry, the yarn is a thick and thin acrylic by Texere called New Fancy.  It is a good price and I like that it looks quite glossy.

But I felt a bit of a fool for ordering one cone for evalution, liked what I saw and ordered more before knitting up a tension square.  How silly of me!  I would have realised that it is thick and thin - just from looking at it that fact hadn't jumped out at me.  Uh-oh.

I do like the effect of this in the resulting fabric. I just would have preferred this to be a smooth yarn.

I had to do some fancy foot work on the hem and the armhole facings.  Neither of those would lie flat: both kept flicking over.  Acrylic has that annoying characteristic of not blocking well.  The hem was initially only half the height - I picked up stitches and knitted downwards, repeating the same yarnover pattern, finishing with a purled turning ridge row and knit up an inside stocking stitch facing that I sewed up.

The armholes started out with a three stitch wide garter stitch that I worked in while knitting this.  The result was that they kept turning to the inside.  So again I picked up stitches and even though the orientation is different to the garter band, I just knit out a K1 P1 rib.  That seems to do the trick and stay in place where it's needed.

Phew.

I still have some of this yarn left. Ponderations...