A Lelah and a Leela

First for the Lelah:

the front view....

the side view......

and the back view (in which my shoulders look huge, but I'm blaming it on the camera angle)....

Pattern: Lelah strapless top from craftster/Lotus blossom tank from summer 2006 Interweave Knits.

Yarn: 4 balls of Blue Sky Organic Cotton in Bone (weird color name)

Modifications:

1. I started out by knitting the medium size of the Lelah pattern. I followed the pattern as written until about 3 inches above the eyelet round, at which point I started the Lotus blossom pattern. If I was going to do this again I probably would have done another inch or so in stockinette before beginning the other pattern.
2. I decided to begin the Lotus blossom pattern at the "shape front" section of the body. I didn't follow a particular size for this pattern; instead I just did lots of ratios and things seemed to work out :)
3. I didn't really change anything with the back of the piece....I just did some more ratios when it came time to do the short rows and the straps. For example, heading into row 1 of the short rows they had 79 stitches and you were to start out by knitting 66 of them. That's about 84%, so I took .84 and multiplied it by what I had at that point (around 50 stitches) to get around 42 stitches. I kept doing that for the rest of the short rows and it worked out fine.

So I've had this done for awhile but haven't gotten around to putting pictures up until now. To be honest I'm not sure how I feel about this one, mostly because it makes my boobs look huge in a scary way. It's not so bad in these pictures, but there are some other pictures where they look ginormous. I will say that I learned a lot of things from this top...it was my first experience with any kind of lace and my first time really trying to alter a pattern. So I'm glad I made it, it was definitely fun to knit, but I'm not sure how much I'm going to wear it.

I also have to say that I am absolutely done knitting with any white yarn for a very long time. White is not my best color since I am very, very pasty. However, I knit the capelet in white because I figured it would go with more, and decided to do this one in white because I needed something to go with some specific pants and skirts I had. But from now on no more white garments :) I did LOVE working with the blue sky organic cotton for the Lelah tank though, it was sooooo soft! Now for the Leela....

This is Arbusto's new kitty, Leela. Isn't she cute? We got her from the shelter last week. It was a tough decision, we were torn between a little orange kitten and Leela. But she has such a pretty face and is such a sweet cat that we had to take her home :)