Silence, Shoulders! tee

This pattern is the Silence Tee by Ruth Nguyen and it was so pretty. It was a good chance to try a yarn base that was summery in Knit Picks Lindy Chain. We’ve had an extra hot summer here, and that influenced my choice!

When I saw the colors available, Rouge and Conch jumped out at me. They were similar values, but the pink and coral leaning version. This was really interesting to me to think how they could look together. So I bought them hoping my vision would work! The pattern has a worksheet for determining the way you might want your pattern to look, and this included ideas for striping. I picked out a neutral color of Plum that reads as grey for my shoulders, and a lighter lavender in Whisper for the edging. I just love combining colors like this, it makes my designer heart happy. It all reads a little nautical to me for some reason!

I was excited to get going and didn’t do a full gauge swatch. I did go up needles sizes commensurate to my normal tight knitting style.

This pattern starts with two lace panels for the shoulders, and that was kinda fun. The chart has lace on both the front and back of the work, but once I got going with it, it was intuitive. It did take a bit of engineering to make the triangles on each side that give the shoulders the proper slant with a fair number of yarn ends but I did try to weave some in as I was going. Once I got going on the flat section, I did some measuring of my gauge and adjusted for how long I needed to go before moving to join in the round, and then tried it on with stitch markers attaching the front spots together. I did leave the yarn attached for the first flat and I was glad I did because I needed to go a little further once I did the testing try on! And as usual, I added a few extra stitches under the arms to give the body a little more ease right there.

I was a little anxious at how open the neckline felt at that point, so I went ahead and did the ribbing and was careful to not pick up too many stitches. I did a few more rounds of the ribbing to bring it up a little close to my neck. I finished with a row of the Whisper before using it to bind off with Jeny’s surprisingly stretchy bind off in pattern. 12 total rows of twisted rib.

Then I went back to the body. I was considering a lace inset at the underbust but I couldn’t get one to work quite the way I wanted, so I just put in a single row of the Plum to bring emphasis to my smallest point. And then lots of knitting in the round continued. I did some rounds with even increases (starting at every 20 stitches all the way around) periodically to bring a little more ease towards my widest points.

I did put on the sleeves before I finished just because they were more fiddly and I wanted the easy in the round striping for some conversation knitting. Picked up the stitches with Plum and the sleeves are in Whisper because I had more of that. 16 rows + 8 rows of ribbing.

I started with one more ball of Conch, and that was what I started the shoulder triangles with, and then the bottom ribbing is that to match as well. 6 rows of ribbing was all I dared to do to save enough for the bind off. I used almost entirely all of the Rouge and Conch on the bottom – smaller than a walnut sized ball of each. With leftover Plum and Whisper, I concocted a crochet edging for below the bottom ribbing. Since it’s a little more of a crop length than I normally do, this will give it some length and a fun detail.

The pattern was really well done, worth a premium price for it. Diagrams, charts for the sizes that had differences, and individual instructions for each size of the pattern as well. I separated it all out in Knit Companion and it was a breeze to follow the chart and see the details.