FO: Henley Perfected

I’m not sure these pictures do Henley justice but here they are anyway.

Henley Perfected by Connie Chang Chinchio

Interweave Knits Winter 2007

Sirdar Luxury Soft Cotton DK in Sage Green, 9 balls

3.25 mm and 3.5 mm Circular Needles

I started to knit on this at weekends only (after putting my back out and not being able to spin as I would usually do on a Saturday/Sunday) so it took a little longer to complete. Having said that, I started sometime in February and finished on the 8th March so it wasn’t that long really.

I decided to knit it in cotton as I thought it would make a good spring/summer top and I am pleased I did, it worked pretty well. I have a long sleeve T on underneath it in the photos as the weather isn’t yet warm enough here to wear it without.

The Sirdar cotton is inexpensive and has pretty good stitch definition.

It is rather splitty though, so even on the stocking stitch sections I had to keep a bit of an eye on the stitches. There are couple of places where I missed a thread and I’ve had to pull it though to the back so it doesn’t show, a little disappointed but it happens.

One thing the pictures cannot convey is how comfortable this is. The cotton seemed a little stiff when I first blocked it but after a little wearing it softened up considerably. Mostly though, I think the comfort is in the styling. The fitted sleeves, which seemed a little long when I was knitting them but turned out to be a perfect length, ease round the shoulders nicely and although there is no ribbing at the cuff ( which I’m not keen on anyway ) the width is not too big to flap around and get in the way when you’re doing anything.

When working on this though, you need to keep a careful eye on your stitch count.  On the first half of the front I had to rip back several inches of the lace pattern because I had gained several stitches somewhere.  The pattern has all the decreases in one part and the increases in another making quite a large repeat.  Because of this you need to sometimes put half a pattern repeat at each end of the work to maintain whole repeats and to also ensure that you don’t end up with large areas of plain stocking stitch at the seams. Connie does explain this in the pattern.  It took (me) some working out but was well worth the effort.

I like this so much I was wondering last night how it would look if I knitted it again in a different yarn and plugged in a different stitch pattern. I have some denim yarn in my stash which would require some careful swatching due to the shrinkage factor but which I think would look great.

But that’s for another day.