Sunday, July 2nd was World UFO Day, and just like last year I took creative license with my definition of “UFO”.

I’ve had a Billowing tee on the needles since August 18 2019. I’d been donated more yarn in exchange for review and after doing a lot of research and seeing this gorgeous version done in the identical yarn I knew it would be the perfect pattern.

The yarn is Scheepjes Whirl in the Green Tea Tipple colorway. It’s a delicious fingering weight 60/40 cotton/acrylic blend with a whopping 1000m/1093y. It was graciously donated to me by YarnCanada.ca in exchange for review. Whirl blends colors beautifully by evenly changing out the color one of the 2 plies of yarn to create a subtle marled effect, and Green Tea Tipple does this by slowly shifting from from charcoal gray to a deep teal-ish green.

The in-person yarn is identical to the online image, and really lovely to work with. There are a few spots where the end of a blended color sticks out a little bit, and one or two knots, but nothing that creates any sort of inconvenience in the knitting.

As the cake began with gray in the center I went with it and decided my top-down tee would start with gray and blend down to the green.

I’d quickly zipped through a swatch and then cast on. I didn’t want a closed neck on my tee so I calculated how deep I wanted the neckline to fall and cast on a larger amount of stitches, adjusting my rate of increases accordingly.

It’s very addictive to work with yarns that change color like this. You want to keep going to see what the next area will look like.

I worked through the yoke, separated for the armholes (completing their ribbing first so the color would be right) and gotten about an inch or two down the body when I’d stopped. My first two nieces were born not long after and I’d spent my time working on a bunch of baby projects. My tee got put aside and then it languished in my UFO bin until this year.

In March of 2023 I was going to a pub knitting night and needed something with mindless stockinette so I could focus on the live music and not my hands. I remembered this project and pulled it from the depths of the forgotten pile only to realize I was no longer the same size as I’d been in 2019 and it was now too big. I also decided I wanted to start with the green instead of the gray.

I frogged the whole thing and re-wound the cake to be able to start with the green end. With two days to go before knit-nite I cast on for a smaller size and raced through the yoke and mini sleeves so I could get to the body. From that night onwards I kept working on the body, keeping it handy whenever I had the chance for mindless knitting.

I was hoping to use the full cake and get to the darkest charcoal but I tried it on last week and it was already at the length I wanted. So I measured out how many rows the ribbing would be, ripped back that many, and began to redo the rows as ribbing to finish off the bottom hem.

That’s where I was at at the start of UFO Day. My goal was to get through the ribbing and remaining modifications so I could present the finished garment, but I underestimated just how long fingering weight ribbing takes. I suppose it’s fitting that my UFO Day post ends with an unfinished sweater!