Early Fall and a Finished Object!

I can’t believe we’re nearly halfway through September!  The calendar turns officially to fall in just over a week and I’m already feeling some of it’s fresh crisp air creeping in to the last days of Summer.  (Though honestly, summer here has pretty much been cold and damp which means I’ve spent a lot of it thinking about fall and winter and seasons in general and kind of missing the days when I lived in places where the seasons were really different from each other).  I’m pretty excited about this — I love fall, and my life has been run on an academic calendar for so long that I tend to think of years as beginning in August and ending in July.  It probably helps that I age every July, too, so my years of work and my years of me tend to coincide.  Anyway.  Fall.  Knitting season, time for cute boots and layers of camisoles and long sleeved shirts and cardigans and other soft squishy knitwear.  I’m excited.  And my fingers are twitching with anticipation of the lovely knits I have planned for the coming months.  As to what’s been happening in the last little while, well…

I finally finished my Hawaiian Diamonds (Rav link) top.  The yarn is Sundara Yarn Fingering Silky Merino in two limited edition colours, and the pattern is Themis by Gryphon Perkins from The Sanguine Gryphon Summer 2010 Pattern Collection.  The buttons on the shoulders came from a tiny, crowded yarn shop in Lausanne.  (La Mercerie, it’s called.  Tiny, really, and packed, floor to ceiling with all kinds of beautiful yarns and embroidery threads and an amazing array of buttons.  It’s the kind of shop where it feels like a young woman in a novel who’s down and out or just simply lost and messy would rediscover herself under the mentoring and patient kindness of a much older shop owner.  Cozy.)  I felt like the garment needed something floral to soften its geometry and these reminded me of well, that.  Plus they’re kind of like cameos (or at least, they remind me of cameos) which I fell and fell hard for years ago on my first trip to Italy.

I knit the pattern pretty much as written, except for the part where I decided that bobbles weren’t really my style and  proceeded to replace the bobble rib with a 2 x 3 twisted rib for the waist and 1 x 2 twisted rib on the cuffs.  They’re also a bit shorter than the pattern suggests, in part because I have short arms and in part because I really wanted to highlight the pretty drape of the lace.

I can’t wait to wear it.  I’m pretty sure it will look great with any one of my lace trimmed camis and some  dark wide-leg jeans or herringbone trousers (still looking for those.  If anyone finds a really great pair, do let me know!).  I love the thought of a little bit of lace peeking out from the bottom edge of the rib, and I love how this top fits into my wardrobe.  It’s dressy and pulled together without being fussy which totally fits my “vintage hipster” (as a friend called it) fashion sense (another argument for the cameo-styled buttons), and the boat neck is super flattering.  I have been blessed/cursed with narrow, sloping shoulders, so I’m pretty much a fan of anything that makes them look broader.  (This includes horizontal stripes.  Go figure).  Love.  Love love love.

I also started something new, but that will have to wait for another post.

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