I'm going to make up for my last few pictureless posts with a very picture heavy entry. My apologies to anyone with a slow connection. This is my victory dance for this project, so I'm showing off the finish, which is (hopefully) more interesting than the individual pieces of the top (as displayed above after I had joined the shoulders).

Thanks to everyone from the last post who offered suggestions about how to deal with difficult yarn when seaming. After I spent some time inspecting the Tai, I decided that I was going to try to do the finishing work with it. It doesn't break easily, and it's slippery enough to slide well past itself, so I thought it might be worth it to give it ago. I was also worried that anything else might be visible in the fabric.

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I actually found the finishing to be much more challenging than the knitting. It was very difficult for me to determine where stitches actually began an ended because of the yarn and the texture it creates. So I was pretty pleased with the results. The pictures above show 1) the seam where the shoulders and a sleeve join and 2) the sleeve joined to the body of the top. This yarn hides a lot of flaws, even if it makes them easy to create.

And here's the top all finished except for the neck fringe (all the ends woven in and everything!):

And here's the finished product, with fringe. I did my fringes all the way around the neckline, as called for, but I decided to only use three strands instead of 6 because I 6 strands seemed to thick for the fringe and I thought it would be a little gaudier than I wanted (assuming a shimmery top is not already a little gaudy).

I do like the way the top hangs. All knit up, the top does have a little bit of a weighty feel to it -- a reminder of the cotton content in the yarn. The drape is quite nice and the fringe actually looks pretty good sitting at the neck.

Before I talk about the detail images (and before I forget), I'd like to mention that I think the finishing instructions were pretty good -- at least as far as the order of processing occurs. I like set-in sleeve patterns where they have you join the sleeves to the armhole before doing other seaming, since I think its a lot easier to get something put together that looks right.

Here's a closeup of the fringe at the neck:

I am a little concerned that the fringe will come unattached over time -- the yarn is a little slippery and the strands are only 5" long and it's quite hard to get the fringe attached tightly. Only time will tell. I have a feeling that this will be one of my very much "handwash" tops.

This is a closeup of the elbow-end of the sleeves, which are 1/2 length. If I were to change anything on the top, I'd go back and do the same thing around the bottom edge of the top.

This is another closeup of the stockinette fabric. It's almost impossible to see in the finished top pictures, but these little open spaces appear randomly throughout the fabric adding a little more texture to an already-texture rich stockinette stitch. I definitely got more of them on the front piece than on the back, it's possible I loosened up a little bit more and got more of them, or it just could have been random.

All the detail shots were taken outside so that the natural colors would come out better. Under indoor light, this top takes on a very yellow/orange look, which is impossible for me to wear. In the outside light more of the blues and pinks show up.

Finally... here's a little victory shot of me in the top:

It's the perfect length for me (long waisted people may want to add an extra inch or so if doing this top), all unsightly straps are covered, and it's eminently to-workable (meaning not too see-through or too short).

Because the last two Filatura top patterns were a light light on the yarn predictions, and because I ordered from Elann, I decided to order one more skein than called for for my size. Of course, this time I didn't even touch that extra ball, and only a little of the last that I started. So I guess they aren't consistently off with their yardage predictions.

Overall, I'm quite pleased! This is my third, almost hassle free, top done out of this pattern book -- I feel like I've gotten my money's worth here. Not only because I like the results, but because the patterns haven't made me crazy while I worked on the top.