I am delighted with my Nanette Tee. It’s done, and I even wore it on Tuesday… first to Rae’s and then to Dagwoods. I love this top! It was fast to knit, it looks good, feels good, and is washable/wearable. My kind of project!

I had a spectacular mistake on another project which will cost me thousands of stitches and over 3 weeks of concentrated knitting. I will detail that big oops when I get a little time. At this point, suffice it to say that I needed a quick successful project.

This top has a gauge of 3.5 stitches per inch, huge yarn (in my case, three yarns held together which makes a flatter fabric than one fat yarn). It started by saying “Cast on 50 stitches.” Yes, that was the right way to start after the knitting letdown of the year.

I held together a cotton/acrylic aran-weight tube yarn called “Kim” (related to Kelly which I have used before, but a solid color), plus a cotton/lycra DK weight yarn called Fixation, and then a strand of a fingering/sockweight yarn in soy silk, wool and a few other fibers, handpainted by Ellen’s Half-Pint Farm.

The Kim was raspberry, the Fixation was hot yellow-green, and the sockyarn was in tropical shades from deep blue to turquoise to green to yellow-green, with one strand of white throughout the skein. Very ColorJoy!

The pattern was written by Joan McGowan-Michael of White Lies Designs. I really love the way she shapes her designs for the actual shape of a woman. I’m not a large woman but I have a few curves and she built in hip, waist and bust shaping so that it fits very comfortably (despite the thick fabric) and looks great.

I love the shoulder shaping on this. It reminds me of Judy Jetson, which for me is a very positive statement. Love that futuristic idea! I have small, rounded shoulders and this shape really looks great on me because of that.

The pattern called for me to gather it at bust level, pulling down the neckline a bit into a sweetheart neckline. As lovely as it really would be, it just is not my style. It was just a little more girly/frilly to gather it than I liked.

I showed it both ways to a handful of folks and all agreed that the square neckline was more “me” than the neckline as written. I went with it. I think I will wear it more this way.

It is interesting to see what I do and do not know about knitting. For the record, I’m over 160 pairs of socks but I’ve knit exactly one long-sleeved sweater. I also have made a summer tee, a tank top (plus this one), and a dance top (cropped). This paragraph contains the entire list of garments made for my torso. And three of those five I did not use a standard pattern, instead I did a knit-to-fit procedure. This was printed pattern #2 for me, for an upper-body garment.

Therefore, I had a few questions every once in a while, which I asked of Rae. I have knit a number of baby garments but they apparently did not have as much shaping!

I would knit this again. It does call for a lot of stretch in whatever yarn is used, so I would have to think carefully about what to knit it in next. This combination was literally what I had in the cotton-realm, already purchased and ready to go. The Fixation is really stretchy so adding that made it fit right.

I must add for the knitters out there, that having two not-very-stretchy yarns and one very-stretchy yarn was a bit of a hassle. Not enough to stop me, and I have used Fixation enough to not worry about it. However, those who are not as confident as I am about holding three yarns together might wonder if they had made the right choice.

But look at these photos… can’t you see? Definitely the right choice this time.

Oh… I used 3 balls Kim, 3 balls Fixation and one hank Ellen’s. (Actually, I barely used any of the 3rd ball of Fixation.) I used size 10 needles and then my gauge tightened up so I cast on 5 extra stitches on the back of the top to add some width (doesn’t show when wearing). I shortened the length of the waist (between hip and bust shaping) and probably needed to knit more between the hem and the first hip shaping but it’s OK with a high-waisted skirt.

How long did it take? I started swatching on August 21, cast on perhaps August 22 or 23, blocked and finished all ends on September 8 and wore it on the 9th. Two and a half weeks? That is just what I needed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 11:25 pmand is filed under Knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.