At some point in a knitter’s life you inevitably run into the problem that you have so many accessories that you can’t possibly wear everything, but a lot of yarn that just hasn’t quite enough yardage for a sweater. This was the case with this yarn given to me by my friends Angela and Teodora. Technically, they had given me six skeins of Ören Bayan Dora, but there were two balls each of blue, grey and yellow. I’ve already used the grey and yellow yarn for a shawl, but had some grey left and two untouched balls in blue. (Haha, blue balls. :’D)

Usually I try to knit only out of my insanely long queue in Ravely (I think at this point there are over 800 projects on it) or from my knitting books, but as hard as I searched, I just couldn’t find the right project. I guess sometimes you just have to say good-bye to some of your resolutions – I just couldn’t let those skeins languish in my yarn box anymore! Searching on Ravelry, I found this cute little top from Paton’s. Ever since my This one for parties sweater I have a fascination for yokes, even though the construction here is kind of different. You knit the front and back piece separately, but don’t cast off the stitches at the top. Instead, you cast on stitches for the arm holes inbetween the two body pieces and then knit the yoke.

I love the sort of nautical look of this top so obviously I’m on the lookout for my ship here! It didn’t arrive, sadly, but that might also be because I don’t actually own a ship. We live in sad times! I did, however, use a nautically themed button for the back. I wish my mom would have taken a better close up, but I hope you can recognize that cute little anchor? This is also where I deviated from the pattern. It originally tells you to sew the yoke together in the back, which is kind of strange if you think about it – why not knit it in the round then from the start? As you can see, I decided to leave it open and use a button for closure instead.

As you can see in this picture, it’s somewhat bulgy in the back. When I first tried it on that bothered me a bit, but after wearing it a couple of times I gotta say it’s really not that huge of a problem. I probably should have believed the comments talking about fitting issues – I knit a size S and you can’t really say it has a tight fit even though I usually fall in the size M range. Who cares, though, not everything has to cling to your skin, right? I still think it’s really cute and very comfortable to wear. I love that it was such a fast and relaxing knit, too! Why always do complicated sweaters, really?

Although truthfully it was only a relaxing knit in the sense that the pattern’s easy. I worked up quite a sweat at the end because I was running out of yarn! I had to sew the front and back piece together using a different yarn because after all was said and done I was left with about 20cm of the blue yarn! Phew! I’m glad it worked out in the end, it would’ve been frustrating to have to frog this one …

I had some guest stars for the photoshoot! This swan couple and their little fluffy babys swam up to us out of curiousity. They probably thought I was going to give them something to eat, but when they realized there were no breadcrumbs forthcoming, they quickly swam away. Not before my mom snapped a couple of pictures, though! I have to admit I was slightly scared because angry swans are serious business, but they seemed friendly enough. 🙂

Pattern: Sleeveless Yoke Sweater by Patons UK

Yarn: Dora by Ören Bayan (DK, 100% Acrylics)