Summer's Sun Shines on Me Still

Or so it would seem.

After all, apparently it's tank top season. Oh, the sunshine may be watery and weak on this cold December day. And there may be a dusty trace of snow outside. But that's just quibbling. In here where it's warm, the Crossed Laces tank top is done!

The poor thing had languished when I, an inconstant lover, dallied for a while with new fiber festival yarn. Back in August, I wanted nothing more than to fly through this project and wear it in the last weeks of the summer. But I found myself stymied by a back-ordered wait for the yarn in the Toscana colorway that so entranced me. By the time the yarn arrived in September, I loved it still, but the urgent wish to knit it was tempered by the likelihood that I would have to wait through the long months until spring before I could wear the result.

I forged ahead anyway, my ardor only slightly cooled. I knitted away and watched the pretty colors with delight. But then our relationship reached that ticklish stage of maturity when the carefree joy of knitting gives way to the workaday responsibility of seaming and picking up stitches for neck and armbands. And that's just when the fiber festivals came along, where my wandering eye lit upon other beautiful yarns, and I fell for the cheap lure of casting on another project for a new fling.

Still, the day came when I was ready to return to Toscana. There really wasn't so much work left to do. It just took a little commitment. I sewed in the last of the loose ends in the waning days of November.

And that nonsense about not wearing it until next spring. Am I so easily discouraged? No, I am not.

How could I have been so blind? All it took was a little creative thinking. A high jewel neck and a jacket over the top are perfectly sufficient to hide a thin long-sleeved knit top layered underneath for warmth. Secretly long-johned, I'll be able to wear it no matter the weather.

I wore my new top to work this week, eager to share with the world a love that's true.

The pattern is the Crossed Laces tank, designed by Beth Whiteside, from the Summer 2008 issue of Knitter's magazine. I knit it in the yarn called for, Colinette's cotton tape yarn, Wigwam. It's an interesting yarn, with cotton's weight and drape and with added stretchiness from the knitted structure of the tape. It feels to me a bit like knitting with rolled-up strips of t-shirt jersey. I went up a notch on needle size to get gauge, as I often do, and ended up with US size 11 (8.0 mm).

It's a fairly simple design. The tank is done in twisted stockinette stitch for an interesting all-over texture, but mostly it just stands aside and lets those glorious Colinette colors shine forth. And, after knitting it once before in the Pharaoh colorway, I could attest from experience that it's a flattering top that hangs beautifully. I chose to knit it with a couple of inches of negative ease, and that counters the weight of the yarn with just a slight figure-skimming cling.

I knit it this time in Toscana, the same colorway photographed in the magazine, which was what drew my eye so compellingly in the first place.

I don't know what it is. There's just something irresistibly appealing to me about this particular combination of colors, like a green apple with a spreading pink blush.

I only know that it makes me happy. I don't have to know why.