Aqua Top

I love knitting, but I won’t lie, sometimes I get a little bored with big or time consuming projects. And although I try to finish one project before moving on to the next, sometimes I just have to stop, do a quick knit and then get back to it. Which is exactly what I did while I’ve been knitting Morning Echo (which is close to completion now).

WIP – Morning Echo Cardigan

One great thing about knit group is you get to see other people’s finished projects which often inspire my makes which is exactly what happened here. After seeing Vanessa’s bright orange plain tee knitted in bamboo cotton, I really liked the neckline and short waist length and thought it’d look great over summer dresses. You can see Vanessa’s project on Ravelry here.

I picked a good summery colour (aqua) that I knew would go with several dresses I had and got cracking, I completed the knit in about 2 n half weeks, nice and satisfyingly quick. The front and back are knitting the same, then the sleeves, the pattern is straight forward, however I knitted the neck band in the round rather than flat as the pattern stated, much quicker!

I finished the top in time to wear it for Knit in Notts 10th Birthday party back on the 2nd if July (yes it’s taken me this long to get around to written this). The only issue I had with the top was it relaxed quite a bit during its first wear, and started to slouch off my shoulders, I had been warned this may happen by Vanessa (which she quite liked about the top) however I don’t have much in the way of a bust to help hold the top up.

However it was easily sorted, I ripped back the last 6 rows on the neck band and re- knitted them on 3mm (as opposed to the original 3.25mm) and cast off quite tightly and that has fix the issue and I’ve continued to wear it quite a bit. It’s great over my summer strappy dresses when it’s a bit overcast or breezey and I’ve not been too warm in it. I have also gone against my self imposed theory that no knitted jumpers or cardigans should have short sleeves (well there’s always got to be an exception & it is meant for summer).

I would definitely Knit this again, I’d perhaps make it a tad shorter and add a little more shaping into the waist as I have a short torso. Pattern info and yarn details are all on my ravelry page. Though is worth mentioning that the Pattern & Yarn only cost me £11 in total (fortunately I only needed 2 balls – I had about 60cm to spare), which is a great bargain of course from my wonderful LYS Knit Nottingham!

Thanks for reading!