hippy heatwave cami!

Whoops. Life caught up with me, and yes, not so much blogging happened. Which doesn't mean that I wasn't knitting, I was, it just wasn't very... bloggable. I have been futzing around on that silly baby dress for a month, and I still amn't at all motivated to finish it off. I really should.

But! I have been doing something that is much, much more exciting, viz: designing my own top! Sort of. Kind of. It's influenced by a) that monster box of cotton I scored off eBay b) Soleil c) the Prosperous Plum Tank. Also by a heatwave we had in Berlin, hence I am tentatively calling it the Hippy Heatwave Cami. The idea was a top with the curvy shaping of Soleil, but in a reasonably modest lace. And then I got mad and decided that two-tone contrasting laces was the way to go (this is the hippy bit.) A dull day at work produced the following, cough, kinda design:


No. I cannot draw. But I can get kinda obsessive about knitting once I get an idea in my head, and even in the 38 degree heat I kicked off:



And this is where I am now:



Of course, it is now no longer a heatwave, and an airy cotton vest suddenly seems much less appealing. But it might still be wearable as a going-out top, right?

I am particularly proud of my lace decreases in pattern:




Look! Up until the last couple, you wouldn't even notice those sections, right? The laces are Fern Leaf and Beech Leaf from the Knitter's Bible, a tribute, if you will.

I'm somewhat less happy about the sizing, though. It seems very, very small. Cotton lace DOES stretch something amazing, though, right? Even Soleil feels very baggy afte a few wears, and that's only stocking stitch, so lace should be even more accommodating? Ack. I thought I planned OK from my gauge swatch, but am now getting cold feet. Not so much that I would stop knitting it, of course.