Queued: Flame Yoke Top

If I had an army of monkeys, a room full of laptops, and a million years, I don’t think I’d be able to get through all of the patterns in Rav’s database. Yet, somehow, that’s what I find myself doing currently. I’ve sorted the knitting patterns just down to “Female” “clothing” “with photos”, and I’ve spent a few nights already click-click-clicking through. Mind you, this is JUST garments, not accessories. My filtered search returned 24,353 items, and each day, I see a few duplicated patterns from the end of my current page, on the next page, suggesting that more designs have been added since I last searched.

I didn’t find this one in my search, though. I found it quite awhile ago, while I was searching for a pattern for some alpaca I bought at a farm down the street from my parents’ house. Anyway, check this out:

Okay, first of all, if you put a gorgeous model in a shoot, I may buy the pattern regardless. I feel like pretty models in simple poses really do amazing things for the garment. The way she holds her hand up gives you a look at the sleeve cuff, and draws attention to the yoke. 

And can you see the shaping? What? Do you need a better image?

LOOK AT THAT. Hourglass-shaped decreases and increases! Illusion of hourglass figure! Well-planned ease! I’m floored. Awesome. Designer Ashley Knowlton did so many effective things in this sweater. The yoke is appropriately sized, for one thing. I can’t tell you how many yoked sweaters I see, where the yoke’s too long and the armpits of the sweater end up sagging lower, and they end up creating this weird saggy pit-boob zone that is not sexy at all. 

I also love this yoke because the designer included a split at the neckline. I love yokes, but I get so bored seeing the same shapes, over and over. This one isn’t a scoopy, roundy “I made a yoke, so here it is, it’s a yoke” neckline. It has INTEREST. It works well with the lace pattern. The only change I might make it to pick up some stitches around the neck and create some kind of stabilized edge. Maybe just a crocheted row. I’d really have to knit it and see what the edge looks like without anything, first, but I just get the feeling that it needs more. 

Look at the length, too. Mid-butt. I love sweaters at this length. Partly because I have a long torso, and partly because I like sweater cover in case I get a hole in my pants or sit in something, or want to wear a sweater with leggings and kick it 1980’s style. And it’s screaming for a soft, simple yarn with an eensy bit of halo, just like the alpaca I have. 

As much as I love this pattern, I have gripes. First off, there are NO pattern notes on the Ravelry page. All I can tell about the construction is through the tags: Bottom up, charted and written, requires kitchner. It also says it is both worked flat AND in the round. How? None of the FO’s have information, and half of them don’t even have photos. Yep, this is the plight I mentioned earlier with projects that are obscure, coming back to bite me in my non-flame-yoked butt

Another issue (pun time!): it was published in Yarn Forward magazine, which has changed its name to Knit Magazine. It makes finding back issues a nightmare. Luckily, the issue has a discussion about the top, and some nice person suggested Yudu.com for locating a digital copy. At this point, I honestly believe there is no excuse for magazines when it comes to having digital patterns on their website, or available as a Rav download.

Despite these problems, I want this pattern so badly. I mean, even the things I’m complaining about have nothing to do with the design or the designer! It’s still gorgeous, just going to be hard to track down.

That said, anyone have Issue 30 of Yarn Forward?
-YX