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.

Love is Love

The Crossed Laces tank top I knitted in Colinette's Pharaoh colorway, in the Wigwam cotton tape yarn, is a really nice top. I don't regret knitting it; I'm actually quite fond of it. The colors are attractive, it goes with everything, it fits nicely, I wear it with jeans or to work. I get compliments. People think it's nice. It's worthy. It does its homework, gets to bed on time and rises early. It eats right, doesn't get into trouble, and says sir and ma'am to its elders.

But in the Toscana colorway, it's love.

Who can say why that green shot through with raspberry, citron, here and there a stray streak of lavender should so tug at my heart? What does it have that the Pharaoh's blues and greens and reds and golds don't have? My undying devotion, that's what. You can't say why. Love is just love.

Yes, even after knitting the top in another colorway, I had to have Toscana. I ordered it. I awaited it with frustrated longing. I groaned with impatience when the e-mail arrived saying it was back-ordered. I counted the days, each day thinking, it could come today.

And on Saturday, finally, it did. I admired it, going back over and over again, between my daily activities, just to gaze upon it. With Stormwatch properly finished, its buttons done up, its husky warmth appreciated, a gusty sigh of relief heaved over the happy outcome of a troubled roving, I could wait no longer.

I cast on for another Crossed Laces tank top. Toscana, you're mine.

Knit Like An Egyptian

After a careful project like the Cherry Leaf shawl, I guess I must have needed a quick one, because here I am all of a sudden with another finished object.

I found myself attracted, earlier this summer, to the Crossed Laces tank top by Beth Whiteside, in the Summer 2008 issue of Knitter's magazine. Knitter's is a worthy magazine that publishes patterns by big name designers and puts on the estimable and wildly fun Stitches events. But I have to admit I occasionally find something mildly off-putting about the designs themselves. I can't put my finger on exactly what. Perhaps it's the color choices.

The Crossed Laces tank, on the other hand, is a very simple pattern given excitement by the masterfully nuanced colors of the Colinette yarn it uses (greener-looking in the printed magazine than in the link above). I am helpless before these colors. The model's smoldering expression, cascading hair, and the perfectly contrasting bead-decorated skirt the top is shown with probably don't hurt any either. Yes, I can be drawn in by such things, even when I'm fully aware that I'm being played like a violin. So I knit away on other things, but kept flipping back to that pattern to take another look. The yarn called for is Wigwam, a cotton tape yarn, hand-dyed like all of the Colinette line, in the Toscana colorway. I visited a couple of local yarn stores, casually sightseeing, hoping to see this unfamiliar yarn and get an idea of what it's like. But neither stocked it. I did see a single skein in one shop, but it turned out to be a loner, there only as part of an afghan kit of mixed yarns.

Finally, I could stand it no more. I had to have that tank top. I started shopping seriously, zeroing in on sources. It turned out that, here in the US at least, Wigwam is pricey yarn. Even the relatively small quantity needed for a sleeveless top was enough to make me stop and think. I found a good buy on the yarn, but with only a few colorways to choose from. After a little pondering about whether I'd be content with anything other than the colorway shown in the magazine (come on, have I no imagination at all?), I took a chance on one.

I chose a colorway with lots of tones of blue and green and gray and red, and dashes of yellow. It's called Pharaoh. Why, I wasn't sure. When I think of ancient Egyptian paintings, it's all fluttering white linen and kohl-rimmed eyes, and lapis lazuli. Pharaoh arrived before long, and the colors were deeper and stronger than I had pictured. The yellow in particular is a hot saffron color, and the blues and reds are dark and bold. Now that I think of it, though, those colors are quite in keeping with some of the artifacts in the fabulous King Tut exhibit now closing in London and making its way to the US. It's not a colorway that I would probably have chosen for myself, had I been able to see it in person, but it has gotten me away for once from the typical palette I gravitate to, so why not?

The Wigwam yarn itself looks a lot like linguini and feels much like a stretchy shoelace. The Crossed Laces pattern is all done in twisted stockinette, which with the cotton tape creates an interested furrowed texture. Too, I seem to remember reading somewhere that knitting in the Near East was often done in a twisted stitch, an inconsequential but obscurely satisfying tie back to the (had I but known) aptly-named Pharaoh colorway.

It wasn't the most flowing knitting; it was done on US size 11 needles, and the crossed stitch tightens the loops so it doesn't slide along as readily. But it knits at a chunky gauge and goes quickly. I decided to make it in a size with a couple of inches of negative ease, and I'm very glad that I did. If I had made it larger, I think it would have hung like a bag. (In fact, I believe I could even have gone another size down, for a more form-fitting look.) As it is, it's heavy and slinkily stretchy, and it clings slightly but attractively.

I love it. And the colorway combines well with a lot of things, from jeans to jackets for work.

Since it turned out well, I can't help thinking about that Toscana colorway. Maybe a second one would be nice....