Wednesday, October 08, 2008

last chance for summer knits

plum1

I finally finished my summer knitting project: Plum!

One year I will get smart and knit summer things in the spring, and fall things in the summer, so that I actually get a chance to wear them when the weather is still appropriate. We're having a warm October day today, perhaps the last for a while, so I grabbed the opportunity to wear this, now that I finally got around to finishing and blocking it.

I love it!

The yarn is Callista, made by elann.com, and it's a great summery blend of cotton, linen and rayon. The rayon is a slightly darker, shinier ply wrapped around the softer, earthier cotton/linen blend, so the color has some nice depth and texture to it.

plum3

The stitch pattern is a purl-twist that makes it look extra-fancy, though it's really pretty simple. Same goes for the points along the neckline.

I knit this blouse top-down as a way to learn how to maintain a fancy stitch pattern when you're also constantly increasing along the raglan seams. This is something I've always wondered about, and discovered that it was not as complicated as you might think. I'm planning to post a tutorial on it some time soon.

plum2

This is probably not a design that I'll be writing up as a pattern, because I was doing a lot of adjusting on the fly and really didn't take good enough notes, unfortunately. I'm really happy with the styling and how it came out overall. I need to enjoy every moment of wearing it today -- it may not come out of the closet again until spring!

18 comments:

  1. That looks great, and looks great on you, too. Very elegant. Enjoy the warm day!

    Cheers,
    Michele

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  2. Love the pattern. Very nice job. The color is perfect on you.

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  3. Wow. That is super cute! Very nicely done. :)

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  4. Beautiful! I love the keyhole neck detail, and the stitch pattern is very interesting.

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  5. it's beautiful and it fits you perfectly... i love it!

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  6. It looks lovely on you, especially the keyhole neck detail. Hopefully you'll get a bit of "Indian Summer" (is that phrase still appropriate? Probably not...) so that you can wear it a couple more times.

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  7. this is so beautiful, fawn! i am so impressed with the design-- congratulations! so many lovely little touches. and the color is gorgeous too.
    xo

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  8. No worries, we're doing what we can to make sure you still have plenty of 80 degree December days!

    Sincerely,
    Your friendly Oil Companies

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  9. Love the sweater. The stitch is beautiful and very pretty around the neckline.

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  10. This is just lovely. I love it~!

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  11. Beautiful! I'm usually not a fan of summer knits (it seems counter-intuitive to me: knits should be warm...) but this makes me rethink my position.
    Lovely details!

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  12. I love it and i LOVE your blog! I can't wait to go through all of your back entries. I'll be linking to some of your projects.

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  13. Beautiful job! And as far as I know, there is no law about wearing a sweater over a sweater, so you can keep on wearing it for a while ;-)

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  14. Its gorgeous.

    I was wondering if you'd knitted it from a new interweave or something that I hadn't seen yet, then saw it was your own design. Wow.

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  15. It's far too lovely to be packed away for 6 months - couldn't you layer it over a black turtle neck or something?

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