Summer Sage

At the very beginning of my sabbatical, I decided it was time to resurrect a long languishing project and turn it into something that I would actually wear…Frolic had been on the needles for years, and quite frankly, a close fitting ribbed top was probably not going to be flattering on my body any time soon…since Bamboo has no memory, I decided to yank my needles and just knit.   I had seen a pattern for lovely top that should work very nicely for a variety of body types so without further ado, I present Summer Sage:

She was started on my flight to Hawaii at the very beginning of my sabbatical and finished while in New England for Rhinebeck.

Pattern: Sage
Needles: US 3
Yarn: Southwest Trading Company Bamboo (Discontinued)

Sage is a top down seamless blouse with a moorish lace motif at the top – the blouse can be knit so that the motif is present on both front and back or just in front.  I opted to go with the just-in-front patterning.  Other changes I made to the pattern include casting on fewer stitches to try to prevent the neck from stretching out too badly – in order to accommodate the difference in stitches, I also knit more rows at the neck while incorporating increases (evenly spaced around) to get myself to the required number of stitches to match the pattern when I started the moorish lace section.  My collar has 5 garter ridges compared to the pattern’s 2.  If I had it to do again, I would also do some short rows at the back (or do some extra rows on the back only before starting on the body section) to raise the back of the collar up a bit.  I also discovered that even with the fewer stitches cast on at the collar, it still stretches quite a bit and could stand to be reinforced – I’d recommend casting on even fewer stitches and increasing as needed to get to the total number of stitches required for the pattern section.  I’ll be weaving a ribbon through the neckline so I can tighten it up a bit.

In addition to the change at the cast on, I added shaping to the blouse via back darts and side shaping.  The pattern as written has the body knit straight from the underarm to the bottom hem.  Because I left the back plain rather than knitting the moorish lace panel, I did not add the garter ridge or additional gather in the back – I generally would not recommend adding the gather at the back unless you really don’t mind a very generous fit through the body.  My sleeves end just above the elbow, mostly because that’s where I ran out of yarn – but it turns out that is a perfect length for this blouse…which was finished just in time to be able to block out and wear to Rhinebeck 🙂