I have made some progress on my summery Myrtle tee. It is knitted entirely in lace, on US2/2.75mm needles, so the progress has been a bit meandering. Nonetheless, I have finished the body of the top, having shaped the armscyes and neckline, and then used a 3-needle bind-off to knit the front and back together at the shoulders. I think it looks rather pretty.

The yarn is Madelinetosh Merino Light in Pink Clay, Sugar Coat, Librarian’s Dreams, Joshua Tree, and Rocinante. I didn’t buy this yarn for this pattern, but rather am re-purposing the yarn from a kit I purchased to make a shawl (the Scout Shawl – which I blogged about here). The kit contains two full and three partial skeins of yarn (enough of each to knit the shawl) and this means that I have had to struggle with how I utilise the colours in the Myrtle. I ran out of the Joshua Tree (dark green) colour after knitting 4 pattern repeats; thus, you can see that the top repeat and a half utilise only four colours instead of five. I am very shortly to run out of the Rocinante (the terracotta-rose colour) as well; I am hoping that I have enough Rocinante left for one pattern stripe on each sleeve. The only colour I have an abundance of at this point is the Pink Clay, although I do have enough of the Sugar Coat (white) to finish all of the ribbing.

The top is a bit shorter than I would have wished – if I wasn’t worried about running out of yarn I would have added another stripe or two before binding off for the armscyes. And it is a bit on the clingy side as well – having decreased both the stitch count and the needle size after an earlier attempt was turning out too big. However, I am fairly confident that the magic of blocking is going to fix both of these issues. I am still pondering what to do about the sleeve shapings. I plan to knit short sleeves, with two or three bands of horseshoe lace pattern and then some ribbing. However, if you look at the original pattern (by Kate Davies), you will see that the shoulder is dropped, and so the sleeves are formed by picking up around the armscye and then knitting directly in pattern, without any short row shaping to form a sleeve cap. I am afraid that that won’t work here as the shoulders are definitely not dropped. So maybe I will need to angle the first pattern stripe or two with some short rows, to bring down the shoulders? I’m not sure yet how to solve this. But such is the fun of knitting. I like these creative fiddlings one must make to bring it all together, especially when one’s gauge is off, as mine is here.

Below you can see the back. I completely love these colours together, and note that they are outside of my usual palette, which is kind of fun.

I had an email from Loop this week (the lovely London yarn shop from which I bought this yarn kit). It contained the following workshop announcement: “Liz Baltesz will teach you to knit the Scout Shawl on 3 October. If you can knit and purl you can make this!” I had a good giggle over this. I gather I am not the only one that purchased the kit at first glance, having fallen hard for the shawl, and then had the daunting prospect of knitting it sink in. If I hadn’t already re-purposed the kit, I would likely take this course. Not because I couldn’t have figured it out myself (I know that I could) but because sometimes it is nice to have companionship on the journey and someone to pat you on the shoulder and say “there, there”. If any of you London-adjacent readers take the workshop, do let me know how it turns out.

Happy knitting, everyone!