I saw the Miu Top by Una Gil on Instagram and thought it looked cute, so I made it.
Here’s the cover photo for the pattern.
This top is a little out of character for me style-wise, but I’m trying to upgrade my closet, so I want to take a chance on some new silhouettes.
It has a wider neckline than I normally like, and it’s a sleeveless top. I don’t like wearing sleeveless tops so I’ll probably always wear a thin layer underneath.
Before I talk about the pattern, let’s talk about the yarn. It’s Harrisville Designs Nightshade yarn.
I spotted it at the Rose City Yarn Crawl this year, and I thought it was so gorgeous that I had to make something with it. These yarns are black wool marbled with another color. It gives them an almost black look, but in the sun or other bright light, the color is more visible. I originally wanted the color VCR, which was a nice green color, but they didn’t have enough in stock. I ended up going with Talk Radio, which is their purple.
It knits up well. It’s not a superwash wool, so it felts together pretty quickly. On the one hand, that makes a nice dense fabric, on the other, it’s a pain if you need to rip anything out. The yarn felt rough when I worked with it, but it blocked much softer. I have worn thin layers under the top when I’ve worn it out, so I’m not sure how itchy it is when worn against bare skin.
DISCLAIMER ABOUT THIS YARN. As pretty as it may be, I had major problems with it breaking. It didn’t seem like the kind of yarn that would break so easily. (It’s 3ply, not single ply, which is where I usually run into breakage problems.) The yarn broke twice when I was trying to cast on. It also broke while I was knitting when I was pulling some from the ball in my project bag. In addition to that, it broke MULTIPLE times when I tried to seam the shoulders. I ended up getting the seams sewn, but it took a few tries and an extremely gentle hand. On their website, someone left a review about breakage that seemed similar to what I experienced, and the company responded saying it wasn’t normal. Maybe I just got a bad batch. Honestly, the colors are so pretty that I would still work with it again, I’d just be mindful of the breakage and be cautious from the beginning.
The top itself worked up quickly. It’s worked bottom up. The waistband is worked in the round until you get to the underarms, then you split the front and back and work them flat. Once you work the front and back to the length that you want, you seam the shoulders and you’re done!
Overall I like the fit. I made a size medium, and I used two full skeins, and then part of a third.
I’m still undecided about the wide neckline.
I might go back and sew up a bit more of the shoulder seam (although I don’t know if I want to fight with the yarn again).
Final review…
The pattern is great – easy to follow, very adaptable, exactly what the cover image shows. I’m not 100% sold on the silhouette for me, but that’s nothing to do with the pattern itself.
The yarn is lovely and the color is beautiful. I’d use it again, but with caution in case the breakage issue wasn’t a one-time weirdness.
It’s a pretty thin book, only 80 pages. So I was expecting compromises. Sometimes small books skimp on the step-by-step photos. Or they don’t include tutorials on the basics, like how to single crochet or do magic ring. Or they write the patterns in a super-cramped format (like “[inc, 2] 6 times”). Or the patterns are crazy simple to keep the instructions really short. But this book doesn’t take any of those shortcuts.
