This summer I have become slightly obsessed with lace work knits, and with one crop top pattern in particular. The Lydia 2.0 Top by Ivy and Autumn is a low back crop top with beautiful lace detailing at the bottom – which is a modified version of a Hitomi Shida Japanese lace motif. The perfect summer top, but also great for the cooler months as a layering piece.
I stumbled across this pattern whilst trying to find a stash busting project to use up a leftover skein of my all time favourite yarn, The Uncommon Thread Everyday Sport. Trying to find a none accessory pattern to use up 300m of yarn was a bit more difficult than I thought but Lydia 2.0 solved it for me! I knitted a size 2 which called for 311m but I decided to play yarn chicken, figuring if worst came to worst I could use up some other Everyday Sport from my stash.
This lace work was a step up from my previous projects, and gave me a bit of a challenge – it’s only 47 rows of lace but it took me a fair while to complete. It’s very much an intermediate project, but great for those that want to take a step up in their lace work knitting without having to commit to a fully lace garment. In hindsight I wish I had made this top a little longer to accommodate my longer torso but I was slightly worried about running out of yarn and so knitted directly to the pattern.
I loved this top so much that before I had even blocked it, I cast on another. For my second I decided to choose a more natural summer fibre going with Kelbourne Woolens Mojave, a cotton / linen mix. We have limited quantities of Mojave left so I decided to go for a little colour blocking for my second version – using Plum Brown for the lace section and Smoke Grey for the upper section.
For the Mojave version, I added 8 extra rows into pattern before splitting the front and back sections – this extra length provides a much more desirable fit for me, and if I make any more in the future I will definitely be adding this into the pattern. The cotton / linen mix makes for a lovely summer top that is great for keeping me cool, whilst having great stitch definition to really show off the lace detailing – Boheme by Fonty would also be a great choice for this top and I’m very tempted to make myself a third using Natural or Silver!
Until Next Time… Happy Knitting!
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