Wednesday 18 May 2005

Life's a Beach

Ho hum. I'm off work sick again this week; still trying to shake off this pleurisy. I'm on another course of stronger antibiotics, and resting as much as I can. It seems to be doing the trick; I do feel like I'm on the mend and the chest/back pains have subsided. It probably explains why I felt so low and lifeless last Friday.

So what is a girl to do whilst recovering - why, start a new project of course! I know, naughty me, but I wanted some no-brain stocking stitch to keep my hands busy. So I got out this stash (yes, stash!) yarn:


Sand, water, surf, shells.. can you hear the seagulls yet?!

It's Narvik Young Touch mercerised cotton obtained from ebay a couple of years ago. I just adore those beach-inspired colours!

I had to be careful with the design I created using my Knitware Sweaters program as I only have 300g (630m) of this yarn and no chance of getting any more. I swatched, measured the gauge, frogged the swatch, and measured the length of yarn used. Then I created (hopefully very accurately!) a garter stitch edged cap sleeve summer top pattern; here are the schematics from the program:


A picture says a thousand words - or a couple of pages of knitting instructions anyway

On Saturday I created the pattern in about 2 minutes flat and started knitting at the regular Beatties Knit Chat meeting; so far I've done the back:


Of course it has to pool - it's beach-inspired!

I actually love the pooling - it looks so, well, pool-like! Also quite funky and retro I reckon.


Can you make out where I did the shaping? I decided to incorporate more into the body to add a little feature and make the seaming easier! I've always wanted to try this, and now there it is. Not sure it looks entirely as I wanted, but it's there and it's ok I think.

By the time I got to starting the front the antibiotics had kicked in and I was feeling a little more competent. So I decided to add a little lace panel to the centre front, as inspired by recent posts at Wendy's blog:


Lace shovels digging in the sand? I think I need a holiday..

I love it so far; Rose - we'll have to wait and see if I need to wear a vest underneath it.. ;-) The lace panel is from my "Harmony" Guide to Knitting Stitches: v. 1 and has the very grand title "Vandyke Lace Panel II"! Note the careful use of my beautiful co-ordinating beaded stitch markers from my wonderful SP4 pal - many thanks Leslie!

Oh yes, I nearly forgot, the yarn for my youngest daughter's crochet poncho arrived a couple of days ago:


Look up - there's a rainbow!

Yes, it's definately rainbow and blue! She does spend a fair amount of time gazing skywards, so it's only to be expected I guess.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The pooling on that top is great! So cool.

Jess

Anonymous said...

Your top looks great. Love the colours and the pooling!

Dawn

MandellaUK said...

Hope you feel better soon. I really like the way the pooling's coming out on that top - just a good thing that's the back and not the front (or maybe not ....)!

Kellycat said...

Hope that you are feeling better! I sure wish I had some of that yummy yarn! I wrote down the name of it to see if I could find some. hehehe...

Mimi said...

That's a pretty knitted top you are making! Wish those kind of yarns are available here.