... that I mentioned the other day (er, or was it the other week...?) ?
Well, here it is being modelled by young Stashlet, who rather alarmingly celebrated being 6 months old on Saturday. How time flies.
He is now the owner of four teeth and a strong determination to learn to stand if not walk. The fact that he's not crawling or able to sit up by himself is no deterrent when you have a clamberable Mama to pull yourself up on.
Or the bath, which is not the best places to learn these things, I know. But happiness is verticality at the moment.
Anyway, cute cuddliness aside, I was thinking about this tank top for a long while before I did anything about it. I also started it at least twice before I was happy with things - making it up as I went along - and then finally I drew the whole thing out and made myself a proper pattern because the post-it note I was scribbling things down on was starting to get a tad illegible.
It's a prototype really and that's just as well because it fits nicely now, which of course means that in a month's time it'll probably be too small.
I am hopeless at knitting to the gauge on the ball band so I knitted a swatch (and no, I was a total sinner and didn't block it or press it - who has the time?) and then made myself some knitting graph paper to that guage.
How I love DIY knitting graph paper. I used to make up knitting patterns on normal graph paper when I was a teenager which goes a long way to explaining my knit it up/pull it out/knit it up... phase.
I was feeling rather unconfident about going back to making things up (I do feel rather like I'm over stepping the mark if I use the word "designing"), but I'm in a really-how-hard-can-it-be? mood at the moment (probably due to lack of sleep) so I will finally do something with that lovely fluffy Big Ball Soft yarn I got from Germany last year, having spent many an afternoon looking for patterns in my guage and failing miserably.
Anyway, the tank top technicalities are as follows...
It's Patons 100% Cotton 4ply (it also comes in DK) in 729 Delta and 702 Sky, and my guage comes up at 23 stitches and 30 rows (on 3½mm needles), compared to the 28 stitches and 36 rows on the ball band (on 3¼mm needles). How do people knit that tight?!
Yes, if I'd had my thinking head on I would have lined the top up with the table, but it was straw-head day, so I didn't. I can live with it.
The top measures 25cm/10" across the chest laid flat and 27cm/10¾" from back of neck to hem. Despite the graph paper, it was still semi made up as I went along, hence the prototype-ness, particularly of the shoulder fastening which is clearly not thought out at all (another straw-head moment)...
... and a somewhat snug v-neck, because I managed to forget to take the rib into account when I was working out how big the neck should be (at this rate I will entirely be metamorphosed? metamorphasised? into Jon Pertwee by the end of the week). But it fits so it's not the disaster I initially thought it would be.
Now I just how to work out how to size it up, and sort out the neck and shoulder fastening. So I'tll probably end up a prototype #2. But at least - I hope - some of the straw-headedness will have been eliminated!
