In an ear­li­er post I talked about try­ing out a dia­mond lace pat­tern for a sum­mer sweater. So it’s final­ly done! 

I used less than one skein of Bernat Hand­i­crafter Cot­ton (large ball, 340g) in Queen Ann’s Lace Ombre. I had start­ed this sweater with the goal of using up the ball of yarn after mak­ing a cou­ple of dish cloths. So I was able to make two dish cloths (one was cro­cheted too! The oth­er knit­ted) AND a sweater out of one ball of yarn. Now, the sweater is of a cropped style and I’m a small per­son, and I did use an extra small skein of pale yel­low for the rib­bing, but still! I was quite hap­py with the ball of yarn :) The strip­ing also worked out quite even­ly with garter stitch. Kind of retro feel.

It’s essen­tial­ly a boat-neck square top. Pret­ty easy to make, and quite com­fort­able, per­fect for mid/late sum­mer evenings, or hang­ing out by the waters where there’s a bit of a breeze. 

This is more of an adap­ta­tion of a pat­tern than an orig­i­nal pat­tern. There is no way I’d have the skills to come up with the dia­mond lace pat­tern. The chart comes from the Dia­mond Girl sweater pat­tern by Red Heart (link­ing to its Rav­el­ry page here, as the direct link to the pat­tern site does­n’t seem to work).

What I used:

One ball of Bernat Hand­i­crafter Cot­ton (large, 340g) in Queen Ann’s Lace Ombre

One skein of Bernat Hand­i­crafter Cot­ton (small, 50g) in Pale Yellow

6mm cir­cu­lar nee­dles (36″)

5mm cir­cu­lar nee­dles (9″ — for sleeves rib­bing and collar)

Tapes­try nee­dle for sewing up seams

Fin­ished size I made: Bust 35″, length 16.5″ (size adjust­ment in ital­ics below)

 

Note: 

The instruc­tion below does require know­ing how to read knit­ting charts.

The sweater starts from the bot­tom rib­bing of front piece, knit­ting body up to neck, bind­ing off a num­ber of stitch­es in the cen­tre for col­lar, then in the next row cast­ing on the same num­ber of stitch­es using cable cast on, then con­tin­u­ing down the body of back, end­ing with rib­bing at bot­tom edge. The side seams are then sewn, then col­lar edg­ing and arm­hole rib­bing are worked using small­er cir­cu­lar needles.

What I did:

1. Down­load dia­mond lace chart. (Try fol­low­ing the link on its Rav­el­ry page, or copy and paste the fol­low­ing link in your brows­er. Click­ing on the link itself seems to only open up the Red Heart gen­er­al site, not sure why: http://www.redheart.com/free-patterns/diamond-girl-top)

2. With larg­er nee­dles and pale yel­low yarn, cast on 65 st. Work 1x1 rib for 9 rows.

The chart is a 16 st pat­tern repeat, the eas­i­est way to size up would be adding 16 st to cast on = CO 81. 16″=approx. 4.25″ in this gauge. CO 81 would there­fore result in 43.5″ around.

3. Fas­ten off pale yel­low, attach main colour yarn, begin work­ing dia­mond lace chart across. Use knit stitch in every row.

4. Repeat chart 4 times. (or more repeats if you’d like a longer sweater)

5. Next row: knit 12 st, bind off 41 st, knit 12 st. (For larg­er size i.e. CO 81, sug­gest knit 16, bind off 49, knit 16.) 

6. Next row: knit 12 st, cast on 41 st using cable cast on, knit 12 st. (For larg­er size i.e. CO 81, sug­gest knit 16, cast on 49, knit 16.) 

7. Next row: knit every stitch.

8. Next row: begin dia­mond lace pat­tern, repeat pat­tern 4 times. (or more times if you’d like a longer sweater, same num­ber of repeats as the oth­er side of sweater)

9. Fas­ten off main colour, attach pale yel­low, work 1x1 rib­bing for 9 rows. Bind off.

10. Assem­bly: Sew up side seams from bot­tom of sweater to under arm, approx. the length of 2 dia­mond lace pat­tern repeats. (or adjust to your measurement)

11. Sleeves: Turn sweater right side out. Using small­er nee­dles, attach pale yel­low to arm open­ing at under­arm seam, pick up and work 1x1 rib­bing even­ly around arm open­ing, for 6 rows, then bind off. Repeat for the oth­er arm open­ing, ensur­ing the same num­ber of stitch­es on each sleeve.

12. Col­lar: Using small­er nee­dles, attach pale yel­low at cen­tre back of col­lar, pick up and knit even­ly around col­lar. Knit one more row around, bind off.

Weave in all ends, and we’re done! :D

Please feel free to leave a com­ment below if you have any ques­tions or need clar­i­fi­ca­tions! Have a hap­py, crafty week! :D