Lydia 2.0 by Courtney Little knitted in Deep Armeria

Accidents are inevitable when dyeing yarn. The odd splash or speck of dye sometimes gets on the wrong skein. I try to be as meticulous as I can be to avoid this but sometimes a dye particle will travel in the air and hit the wrong skein! Some of these are over dyed and become one of a kind skeins and some go into the rejects ‘bin’ aka my own stash that I’ll get round to using one day!

I was dyeing a batch of Deep Armeria on a luxurious merino cashmere silk base and I noticed a couple of dark speckles on one skein. It’s a colour that I like to wear, so I decided to look for a quick summer project for it.

I only had 400 metres so I knew it would have to be a tank top of some kind – I stumbled across the Lydia 2.0 by Courtney Little and fell in love with the pretty lacework. It is a cropped vest with a deep v on the back, although it could be worn either way. I knew the cropped length wouldn’t be for me so I began to worry I might not have enough yarn to make it longer. I cast on anyway! I used the recommended 3.75mm needle and knitted the size 4.

I have to say this pattern was written really well with a wide range of sizes from 27in – 66in and there are separate pdf’s for knitting this flat or in the round.

The provisional, tubular cast on was new to me and it took me a couple of attempts to get it right. It was well worth it though – so professional and one I’d definitely use again. There’s a brilliant video tutorial here.

Onto the lace charts and it was really clear to understand. There’s also written instructions too which is always handy when you first get started. I do like when the lace pattern becomes easier to ‘read’ from the knitted piece. When you can almost predict what the next row will be.

A couple of evenings later and the lace was done. On to the easy section. A wide rib effect that I chose to make longer. I knitted an extra 2 inches before splitting for the v of the back. The shaping of the back and front sections worked up in no time and there was a really handy list describing where to make decreases so you could easily keep track. Such a great idea.

The straps of the top were to be grafted together with a kitchener stitch but I decided to have a block and a little try on first. It was ‘ok’, but the length was borderline! I had around 20 grams of yarn left over so I decided to frog the shaped sections and add a little more length. In hindsight I should have straightened out the crinkly yarn first but decided to just crack on and hope that it would even itself out in a second block. It could be neater but hopefully it’ll sort itself out once I’ve worn it a couple of times.