Yugi is Now Out! (And some suggestions)

Yugi tee is now my current favorite warm weather top, and I’m ready to make another thanks to my amazing testers’ versions! And with their versions, I’m debating some of the choices they’ve made, as well! Let me get into this top, and then I’ll talk more about suggestions, tips, and options!

An Asian American woman with long, blonde hair is standing sideways with her head turned towards the camera. She is wearing a knit tee that has a gradient, pastel rainbow chevrons striped with thin, grey stripes. The background is greenery with a set of stairs to the left side.

Yugi is worked flat from the top down, then joined in the round after the underarms. A small number of decreases immediately after the join are worked for underarm shaping, then even through to the slightly cropped length. A bit of positive ease (6”) has been added to each size, but can easily be swapped for less ease, if desired. I am wearing the tee with only about 3” of positive ease above.

A redheaded woman is mid-stride while looking to the right (her face is looking to the left of the photo). She is wearing the same rainbow and grey, chevron striped tee. The background is green trees, and it is golden hour with a ray of light cutting through the middle of the picture.

Above, my model is wearing the tee with roughly the 6” of positive ease built in. She is wearing a SIze 3 (meant to fit 36.5” full chest, and model is 37” full chest). The neckline is wide and scooped, and the sleeve style is drop sleeve. The upper back is shaped with a small number of short rows in garter stitch to raise the back neckline and create a small slope for the shoulders. The front shoulders mirror the back.

A redhead stands looking out over a wooden railing. Her back faces the camera. She is wearing a rainbow and grey striped knit tee.

And now to get in to some more of the comments and suggestions. This tee was designed in collaboration with Yarn Matter for a semi-limited edition mini set using her Silk Sock base (85% merino, 15% silk; 492yds/[450m]/100g). While it was not fully exclusive to a kit, it does limit your ability to create this identical item as seen. Whether that limitation is that the color set is not available any longer, you want to use a different yarn, maybe you want to use a different fiber type. Maybe these colors are not your jam, but you’re still liking that pattern. Whatever the reason, I want to offer a few suggestions on your knit!

An Asian American woman with blonde hair stands looking to the left (facing the right side of the photo) while wearing a rainbow and grey knit tee.

The first note is that yardage is tight on some of the particular mini colors, depending on the size, as written. Some sizes require extra minis of even just 2 of the minis, but these are sold in full sets. That would definitely be a huge debate for me, I def know! If I needed 2 full sets, I know I’d be more ok getting double the number of minis, but for less than half of them? Hmmm…

If you are working a gradient set as seen, I would likely just borrow from surrounding colors for the very last couple stripes where I run out (i.e. - for the last stripe in pink, I’d run out and continue with the orange… then for the orange, I’d just continue with the yellow when I ran out).

If this would annoy you even more, I would suggest working it as a full gradient and just change out colors as you run out of them. Depending on your size, you may end up not going through the whole rainbow, so you can also count up the total number of stripes you will work and divide that by how many colors you have to know roughly when you’d want to swap them out.

A flat lay of a 2 colored Yugi (super cropped version) in white for the trim and thin stripes and green for the lace stripes.

I also suggest checking out how you feel about possibly just using two colors for yours! It’s actually really cute in two colors, and then you can stress less about all the color changes and enjoy the knitting. :o) Honestly, I’m thinking my next one maaaaay be just a two tone one, but which colors, I don’t know yet!

A Yugi tee in progress with yellow as the trim and thinner stripes and a speckled pink for the lace stripes.

I’m super loving it with a speckled yarn! I also want to use this pic to demo a bit on how the neckline is a wide neckline, but that it’s going to seem even bigger until you add in the ribbing at the end. And this is, in part, due to the fact that garter stitch is a fairly wide stitch type, but the 1x1 ribbing will help to draw that in a good amount. The chevron pattern also helps to bring it in, as well. So, I will caution that the back neck appears much wider than most of my other patterns (and I won’t lie that it just is wider than normal), but it does get better with the neckline finished up! But, please keep this in mind when choosing a size! I have included back neck width with this pattern b/c of the wider neckline.

And all black Yugi.

One of my testers ended up only having enough yardage in a single color… so she went for it! And WOW, I reeeaaaally love the neutral single color!! Sooooo good! And, I’m not going to lie. I’m mildly jealous about how many fewer ends she needed to weave in…

And this is a good time to mention the big one: for plant fibers/100% silk, it may be good to pick up fewer sts around the neckline. Since these types of fibers have less give, the ribbing will also have less give and possibly end up stretched out. An animal fiber will relax down and tighten up the neckline as written, but that looser neckline seen in the all black one above is from the 100% plant fiber content of the yarn. This tester is going to redo their neckline with fewer sts to adjust for this. And it was a great note for me, as I rarely use plant fibers (my hands don’t typically like them), so this didn’t occur to me!

Classic rainbow colors with a dark grey accent color Yugi.

The remainder of this post will be dedicated to suggestions to make your minis stretch to their fullest potential. Mini gradients are so popular, and when I started this design, I didn’t realize how much yarn this particular stitch pattern would eat when I started… I was surprised by how much I ended up going through, actually! So, I wanted to assure I offered some options!

1) As stated above, feel free to work your tee as an overall gradient instead of a rotating gradient. This will definitely allow you to work your minis to the fullest extent, and also allow you to weave in fewer ends since you’ll be able to carry your colors along until you run out.

2) Swap your minis to be the thinner stripes. This will certainly create a different appearance, and will mean you’ll need more yardage for the solid color, but will mean you won’t use as much of each mini per stripe.

3) Alternate in stripes of the main color between the gradient colors (work some of the lace stripes in your solid color). Again, you’ll use more main color, but stretch out your minis.

4) Buy a full skein or extra minis of any of the colors you really like a lot, and stretch out the number of stripes in that particular color (like, for this one, since I like pink a lot, I could have gotten extra pink and worked that extra such that I ended up doing mostly pink, then ended with the rest of the rainbow for just one stripe each).

Hope this helps! <3