Copper Penny

There are times when you are making a garment when things work out so well that you find yourself dancing around like one of the elves in the shoemaker's shop. It's a rarity, but it's a delight when it happens. I'll leave my dancing to your own imagination...

The object of my glee is this top I just took off the blocking boards. I made it out of a couple of skeins of my own handspun fingering weight Blue Faced Leicester. It's so cute! So cute I can't even stand it. I'm especially delighted because I managed to get some good photos of it showing its true colours:

I'll admit that I'm not all that crazy about the sleeves, but when you're only working with about 800 yards of sock yarn, you have to make some concessions. I wanted to be sure it would be long enough, so I sacrificed sleeve length. In the end, I did have a few yards left for the sleeves, but I decided I wanted to try finishing them off with a row of single crochet and a row of half double crochet. It resulted in a nice little flutter sleeve:

I was banking on the fact that superwash wool grows when you wash it, since the torso length was still a little on the short side when I bound off. After soaking it, I let the top hang with the weight of the dripping water pulling on it. That did the trick, and it stretched to the length I wanted for it, with no real danger of it creeping back up. That's when the dancing started:

So that was a fine experiment. I learned I can make a top with about 800 yards of sock yarn. If I were to do it again I would probably go up a needle size from 3.5mm to 3.75mm at least. I think the yarn can handle it, and it would give me even more drape and length. And I'd certainly plan for longer sleeves, but I think I can live with these.

My next experiment is with these three balls of alpaca that my friend Linette brought back from Peru for me. I'm imagining something using intarsia and lace... Or maybe I'll actually use a pattern this time and save me the angst of wondering if it's going to work.

But what's the fun in that, really?