Happy Friday! It’s a gorgeous day here in Seattle and I’m headed to Flock Fiber Festival this weekend so life is good! I was able to finish my shirt last night, so I’ll wear it tomorrow and Vitamina Sunday. Yes, I want to go both days because I have a plan to not buy too much. I will look around at everything Saturday but buy nothing to determine what I want . Then I’ll go on Sunday and buy it. If something has sold out, then it’s not for me. I plan to buy only 6 skeins – 3 colors with 2 skeins each. I want to do the WestKnits MKAL again this year and often that has required 2 skeins of at least one of the colors, and I don’t tend to keep a lot of that in stash so I’m hoping this will help! Even though the yarn requirements for the MKAL aren’t available yet, I’ve now done the last 5 so I know that generally high contrast, low variegation skeins are best so I’m confident I’ll be able to find something good. It’s so cool that I live a 15 minute walk from the convention center where this will be so I can really take my time. When I’ve gone to Rhinebeck in the past it feels like”omg I have to buy this NOW” because we really only spend like 3-4 hours there. I’ll write a post about the festival and we’ll all see how I did. Anyway, on to the point of this post!
This is the So Summer Shirt by Jessie Maed Designs. I knit it using 5 balls of De Rerum Natura Candide in the colorway Grand Bleu on US 5 (3.75 mm) needles. I cast this on Friday 7/25 and cast off Wednesday 8/7, so a little under two weeks. I bought the yarn on 7/12, so I think less than a month may be a record for me from yarn purchase to finished object! I LOVE the denmin-y look this has due to the cotton slubs in the yarn. The yarn is 70/30 wool and cotton so it still feels soft with having a little bit of lightness from the cotton. It was slightly grippy and hard to work with at points but worth it – it’s so striking!
This pattern has options for rolled, folded, or ribbed hems, and I chose ribbed mostly because I didn’t feel like finding yarn for a provisional cast on lol. I decided not to add length to the sleeves and so I added an icord edge to the front and back, and bound off the neckline using an icord bind off. I really like the simple look of this and not having to pick up any stitches to do sleeves or a neckline was really nice! I talked in my Vitamina FO post about maybe reducing the neckline on this, but in looking at the pattern and the ratios I decided not to. I maybe could have done a few more stitches on either side but it definitely doesn’t have the same falling off the shoulders feel that Vitamina did so I’m happy with it. I do think if I were to make this again, I’d cast on the number of stitches that are at the spot when you split for the front and the back instead of increasing up for a little looser feel around the stomach. I also might have skipped some of the increases after the split, it’s a little big in the chest. But these are small things and overall it’s still a great basic that I’ll get a lot of wear out of!
Since I bought this yarn at La Mercerie on Bainbridge Island, I figured I’d end this post with a TikTok I made documenting my day on Brainbridge last month! It’s a gorgeous spot a 45 minute ferry ride from the city, and as you’ll see I had a wonderful time!
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