Big Boy, Soxa Tank and Lacking Subtlety

Last year I fell in love with a woman in a steampunk outfit that combined stunningly deep, saturated, and eye catching shades of orange and purple. The colour combination burned itself into my brain and I had to force it into my wardrobe somehow. Luckily my wardrobe is used to being stuffed with colour choices that display a complete lack of subtlety or sense. 

 

The pattern I eventually decided on using for my experiment in eye-catching was Bonnie Nurnberger's Soxa Tank from Knitscene Summer 2014. I didn't think I would be able to pull it off with purple short shorts (or indeed pull off purple short shorts) but it does make both an attractive sweater vest and tank. And those are two wardrobe pieces I'll always love. 

Lace Front, contrast edging

So once I had the pattern there were two problems to overcome. One is that the pattern is straight up and straight down. I am considerably top hevey. Before I cast on I made reams of notes all trying to solve the problem of how to insert my breasts into a flat tube without resembling an overstuffed sausage. I contemplated bust darts but I couldn't convince myself that they would look good against the all over lace pattern so instead I took the easy route, adding increases and decreases at the side seams to give me more space were it was needed. 

back in reverse stocking stitch 

My second (and last) dilemma was the colour. I knew exactly what colours I wanted so it was just a case of finding someone who could pull off the bright, amazingly saturated colours I was after. I saw Easy Knits, one of my favorite dyers, at Fibre East and came home with a bunch of his Big Boy. Big Boy is a delicious mix of exmoor blueface, alpaca and nylon so aside from the great colour it has amazing definition, a lovely halo and is both hardwearing and machine washable. 

By way of a summary I'm going to give ratings out of five for the three things I mentioned in the title. Big Boy gets 5/5 for being absolutely perfect, Soxa Tank loses out at 4/5 for a lack of bust shaping, and Lacking Subtlety gets 79/5. Because why not.