Sebright Bantam Dress

Sebright Bantam Dress in Einband

I finally finished this dress, which had been waiting for me to pick it back up again for a couple of months, and just in time for it to be the last FO of 2018! Looking back, I didn't actually do much knitting this year - according to ravelry, just over 4000 yards in 7 completed projects - and here's the breakdown:

• 2 of them were the same basic 2 x 2 rib hat (one for me, one for my mom, both of which I didn't take pictures of)
• 2 more were testknits (Satinel & rumo)
• 2 were gifts for my auntie Kit: chrysanthemum shawl by Francoise Danoy followed by a bolero she commissioned from me to wear to her son's wedding (for which I also forgot to take a finished photo of her wearing... I've really been falling off the wagon lately!)
• Which leaves this 1 project that I made 100% for me: this Sebright Bantam dress, which was inspired by the silver Sebright Bantam chickens I saw at Center Island way back in the summer. Here's a photo of a silver Sebright hen from Wikimedia Commons (attribution in caption), because I failed to take a picture of the ones on the island.

Taken by Mark Robinson from Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. No changes made to the original image.

Aren't they sweet? And their plumage absolutely beautiful? So I decided to make a dress that was like their feathers. It came out more mermaid-like than I had envisioned, but I like the look of the mitered diamonds, and it's my first time working with this technique, so I'd say I did a pretty good job!

Which is not to say that there aren't a couple of things I would do differently next time, namely:

• It's a bit tighter than I'd like. The fit is actually perfect, but because of the yarn/needle/construction combo, the smallest diamonds aren't as stretchy as they could've been if I'd kept the smallest needle size a 4mm or even just maybe 3.75mm instead of the 3.5mm I went with. Which means the dress is a bit difficult to take off - it's a tight squeeze out even if I take the both arms over the head approach. It works. It's just a touch awkward.
• The Einband isn't great for next to skin wear, for me.
• I suspect this issue would be solved if I used a slightly larger needle size for the smallest diamonds though, because then I'd be able to comfortably wear a full slip under this dress. As it is, I can wear a half slip, which is still good because the lower/larger diamonds are a bit sheer.
• I underestimated how many rows of diamonds I'd need for the full length of the dress so that it would be long enough for my taste, so next time, maybe also knit a full row of diamonds more for both of the two larger needle sizes so that less of the dress is at the smallest diamond level.

That's basically it, though! Not too bad for a wildly experimental run where I had no idea what I was going to do for the neckline. I like the varied textures I ended up with, and I also used up some mystery mohair-like yarn I got from a stash swap - whoot! To be honest, I suppose the biggest issue right now as far as this dress goes is: where do I wear it?

I'm going for a haircut soon, I promise

I've also been working on what was originally supposed to be a really lacy baby pink dress, but just ripped back most of the skirt portion because it wasn't looking how I wanted it to look, so that'll have to wait till next year to be completed. I'm not even sure I like the bodice part of it, but it's a construction I wanted to try, and I had an idea in mind for how I wanted it to be, so I'm going to roll with it and see how it turns out once I finish the new skirt.

Here's to hoping I'll do more knitting in 2019! I'd really like to make some more comfortable dresses with some of my superwash merino stash (of which there is more than I'd like to admit), for soft, next-to-skin wear, so there's a mood going forward! I've also really been slacking with regards to keeping track of my reading & film-watching, so I want to get back on that.

Honeydew

DONE.

It's been a while since I've posted anything but books and movies. Three whole months! The library life is certainly one I can't quite seem to separate from what would be personal life, and at any rate I'm not entirely sure I want to expend too much effort trying to do so: reading and books (two separate things, yes; they're related, but owning the latter does not mean I do the former for every book I own) are such integral aspects of my life that I'm not sure what would be left if I were to make a conscious effort to stop myself reading on my downtime. (Also, that would mean I'd have to actually lug all the books & movies & CDs I borrowed back to the library where they belong. Which at last count is numbering over 50 and thus strikes me as too much a hassle.) But all this has nothing really to do with this dress.

Flounces were supposed to go where the vertical shaping is at

The original design has actually gone quite down the drain altogether:

1. The horizontal flounce that had been the design feature being scrapped altogether for the ones at the waist
2. The romper jettisoned for a dress (easier to wear)\
3. Sleeves added
4. Added pockets, but of a different sort (originally wanted angled side pockets)

And that's just an incomplete list. In short: I still have room in my wardrobe for the original design and I'd like to do it because I swatched for it, darnit!

It just goes to show how utterly unpredictable the design process can be from thinking up what I'd like to make, to figuring out the logistics of actually making it (e.g. top-down? bottom-up? provisional CO so I can do both? how should I be picking up those flounces?) , to doing the swatches and then actually knitting it up. In this case, I ripped out the top half I think 3 times because my swatch kept lying to me or I simply left things to chance and refused to actually face reality: I'd have to do some more calculations. The first time I ripped out, I even made sure to use the top that I had knit to recalculate the gauge, since that should have given me a more accurate gauge! To be honest, I still have no idea what my true gauge actually is, which is why I ended up changing the entire back to be ribbed.

The story doesn't even end there. After wearing the completed dress out once, I realized I  had to change the bottom hem of the skirt from just a tubular BO to a round of decreases about 3" above where I wanted the skirt to hit, followed by 1x1 rib (from 2x2 above) all the way down before binding off tubular. This was because it was doing that thing where the skirt gets caught between your legs when you walk and it looks like you're wearing shorts. Not pretty. Then since I was at it, I ripped out the neckline to pick up fewer stitches (3/4 rather than 4/5), doing the same *CO 2, BO 5* ruffled BO as before. It forms rather a pretty picot that isn't too flashy, which worked well for all the flounces too (minus one BO in between picots, since that wasn't too important).

Oh, and did I mention I picked up and knit another layer under the actual skirt in 1x1 rib almost all the way down (minus an inch or two), then tried it on and ripped it all back out, because you could see where the underskirt ended and that wasn't elegant enough a solution for me? This dress has had me running in circles!

Real talk: When is the answer ever "no pockets" though?

There were so many details that had to be hammered out along the way - pockets or no pockets? Am I adding in the horizontal flounce? What about the one at the waist? I can't add that in the same way after I pick up the waist stitches for the skirt, so I have to decide that soon!, etc. - but all in all, I'm happy with how it turned out. I learned a new BO method that worked really well with the ruffles and made for a nice neckline as well so I didn't have to do anything particularly fancy with that, and figured out a way to make thinner pockets that also have the added benefit of staying in place, which is great. The only downside being that I have to do a touch of seaming after knitting the pockets, but it was well worth it.

So glad it's done! I don't even care my face isn't in focus here!

Riff Dress

Just finished a dress.

In light of my recent addition to the stash (though really, I haven't been adding to the herd much this past year or so), I feel as though I should put on a proper show of stashbusting at the very least. Granted, the Rosebleed shawl was also knit using yarn dug out from somewhere around the middle layers of my stash, time-wise; I purchased both this teal cotton and the studioloo lacey loo at the same time at the Knitter's Frolic a couple of years back. Maybe there's an incubation period that yarn has to go through before I can finally use it? (Though I'm not sure what that means for all the yarn that I bought when I first started into the knitting abyss and have yet to use...)

Anyway, this dress was a riff off the Country Garden Top pattern, using completely different yarn & needles producing a different gauge and completely disregarding the pattern altogether save the feather and fan bib. I also took the idea of knitting the straps past the front and attaching everything at the back. And that's basically it. So I think of the Country Garden Top pattern as more of an inspiration than anything, but I'm also veering heavily towards "let's not make a pattern out of this".

More slip dress-like than I planned

I was aiming for a summery dress, and to be sure, this fits the bill, but I overestimated how much 40" would be once it went completely around the bottom hem of the dress, so it's a bit less voluminous than I wanted it to be. In hindsight, I should have skipped the A-line shaping altogether and did heavier decreases at the top, just under the front bib, to get a more dramatic shape out of it, but I suppose this is fine too. It came out rather more slip-like than babydoll dress-like, but I think I can work with this - and it supports layering!

The yarn gives this dress wonderful drape, as you can see in the photo above, and the cotton makes it heavy enough to actually hang down rather than float about me, which I sometimes get when working with light wool. I was afraid that I was playing yarn chicken throughout - the original plan was actually to introduce another yarn to colourblock the straps/back because I thought I might not have enough yarn - until I realized that the first skein of yarn (out of two) took me well past half of the entire dress. It would probably have worked out just about perfectly if I had skipped the body decreases and just knit a straight tube up until the armholes, but alas. I'm pretty happy with how the back turned out, though! It's a bit of a hassle in terms of making it work with a bra, but isn't it always? And the straps going all the way from the front to the back was a nice touch, which I probably wouldn't have done normally, so I'm glad I took a look at the Country Garden Top pattern (if only just to double check that what I thought was feather and fan lace was actually feather and fan lace).

Not as sheer as I'd feared, either!

The entirety of the pattern I drafted was worked out on the yarn label, so there isn't much to go off of, and I'm not sure I really want to write this one out at all, as I mentioned above. We'll see if I ever do it, but in case you're interested in knitting this up yourself, here's the recipe:

• It's an A-line dress, knit bottom-up.
• CO a multiple of 18 sts for the bottom hem (the feather and fan pattern is an 18 st repeat)
• I cast on 40", but I would maybe suggest even 50~56" if you want to do the body decreases throughout to get a nicer silhouette
• If you want the A-line like I did, decrease slowly up to the armholes
• You don't want to decrease down to your bust measurement though! You're going to be doing *k1, k2tog* or some variation thereof (I think just k2tog to end, or even *k1, k3tog* might be better), so make the calculations as to how many stitches you need before starting out the armhole shaping
• Keep in mind also that you'll be binding off about 1" each side of both front & back pieces! Those you don't need to account for in terms of the decrease row.
• I also think it might be better if we keep the decreases to the front bib (but do it all along the back), but that's up to you. The ribbing of the strap does help ease the look.
• Armhole decreases/shaping (do this in reasonably few rows, because you want the pleats/gathers to be right over your bust - I decreased one stitch/side, every row, 3x)
• Gathers row: whatever variation of this you decide on, just do it across to get to the measurement you need to cover your front
• Keep in mind that the ribbed straps will pull in a bit, so keep a few stitches (or just don't do the decreases as heavily) in the strap area to accommodate for this
• I forgot to do this, personally, and remedied it by pu&k around the outer edge of the armhole, which worked
• Mark off however large you want the front bib to be and start feather & fan lace, placing markers to mark off where the ribbing starts/ends and where to work the lace
• Work even until high enough for you, then BO all feather & fan lace part
• Work straps individually until it goes around to the back, minus however high you want the back neck to be.
• I worked the back piece armhole shaping and all that just past the gathers row so it was ready for grafting while I was here, also. Just use another skein or use the other end of the ball of yarn you've got.
• Long-tail CO back neck stitches using scrap yarn and knit across to join both straps to main body piece once more.
• Work in rib until long enough to reach back piece.
• Graft together using kitchener stitch. I'm not sure if it's necessary, but I made sure to adjust the instructions for whenever I saw that it was a purl stitch next rather than a knit stitch (because one side is ribbing), to make it a smoother transition. I know this is something that makes the work look better if both sides are ribbing/not stockinette, but I'm sure it would have blended in just fine even if you just do the regular ol' kitchener.
• If you would like to add some stability to your straps, PU&K around outer armhole (I didn't even count, but I did just pick up every edge stitch I saw - I slipped first stitch of every strap row, so you might actually want to do a different pickup rate)
• I didn't do that for the inside, because I liked how it looked better without, but feel free to do whatever!

I know you're thinking there's no way I could possibly have written all this onto one yarn label, but that's because I was making stuff up on the fly as well. It's mostly just the calculations, so it really does fit on just a few lines!

Have fun!

Burnt Brioche Dress

Stretched vertically, but shaping still falls within acceptable range - huzzah!

According to my ravelry project page, this dress has been in the works since 2015, which sounds about right to me; it certainly feels like it's been forever or so. Technically, this version of the dress has only been in the works since October 2016, and I've had projects on and off between stints of knitting this up, so once I got the math figured out, it came together pretty nicely (if I do say so myself) and without too much fuss. It has gone through a couple of false starts though, from two bottom-ups to working out the issues with the CO and raglan shaping (see below), and I'm very pleasantly surprised at how well this yarn has held up to so many frogs! Blocking itself took 2 days to finish because of the torrential and not-so-torrential downpours, with the humidity that comes of those, so fortunately for me, it dried out just in time for the one sunny day of the projected week! (I thought April was supposed to be the rainy month and May was supposed to be sunshine, lollipops flowers, and rainbows. April showers bring May flowers, or so I thought it was supposed to go.)

Side-split hem.

Onto the details:

1. Top-down. The CO took me 3 or 4 tries to get right, because the regular brioche CO looked much too loose to me, in that it looked really sloppy. In addition to this, I had calculated a neck size that was a smidgen too small the first two times, I think.
2. Raglan sleeve shaping to get the sleeveless dress, because I really like the look of it. This part took two tries, from ripping out all the way back to the base of the neck to the end of the raglan shaping. After I got the correct shape, I BO the raglan "sleeve" stitches and split up the front and back, continuing down flat before doing quick armhole shaping and reconnecting to knit the body in the round.
3. Shaping spread out between the center back-ish area and the sides (for the front). These come down a little lower than I had originally knit them, because it stretched out a bit during blocking, but thankfully they still fit within the right areas or so. I'm eternally grateful I don't have to rip back and reknit because they shifted downwards.
4. The original length was actually the slit starting high/mid thigh and the dress ending just below the knee, so the vertical stretch dragged the entire dress down to mid-calf area. This also worked out (and I kind of planned for this eventuality also, stopping below the knees so I'd be happy if it stayed there or if it stretched down) - hurrah! I was worried I'd have to kitchener an inch or two from where I started the slit, but because it stretched out, it saved me a bit of work there.
5. I reinforced all - I might have missed one or two raglan edges though... - of the potentially weak spots where I split to knit straight or reconnected for in-the-round. Both split hem areas have been sewn together, as have the AHs and especially the one raglan point that was particularly weakly connected (I think it was just the nature of the construction that that specific connection was going to be a bit more tenuous than the rest of them, but I probably could have done something to avoid that to begin with, like doing a k2tog or something). It doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart anywhere, so I'm going to be happy with that until it does.
6. I probably should have foreseen this, but it's a bit see-through, which I'm going to say was unavoidable: knitting at a tighter gauge would have destroyed me physically and emotionally, and I'm not sure whether the fabric would have been too stiff if I went down a needle size besides.

I'm bffs with my wall. Doing Fusion Dance with it, DBZ style.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out! I'm thinking of writing up the pattern for this, as has been the plan for the past three years, but there's no projected timeline whatsoever. I'm coming to realize that setting myself these deadlines is an exercise in futility. Who knows? I might even be more motivated to finish it if I'm not forcing it on myself.

There's no snow on the ground, but here's Snowdancer anyway

Knee-deep, dancing in the snow (except there's no snow out there)

I'm quite late in submitting my testknit of Snowdancer, but I'm finally done! I had a couple of false starts, using a different yarn, which turned out to be much too transparent for my liking; changing the pattern to include picot edging (to go with the scallop pattern, of course); etc.; none of which really panned out. So in the end, I pretty much followed the pattern, with a couple of mods:

1. Because of differences in gauge, I CO one size larger, as well as adding a couple of increase rows to the raglan shaping.
2. I lengthened the entire thing into a dress and changed the position where I started the chart, postponing it to the very bottom, right before the "ribbing". I also added four sets of body increases, but I'm wondering whether I should have done that at all at this point or kept it slimmer. Oh well. It's also a bit longer than I planned, but I really don't want to have to rip back a fourth or fifth time, whichever iteration of this garment it would be!
3. Instead of ribbing, I ended up doing a 1x1 faux stranded ribbing, ending everything with an attached i-cord edging to prevent the hems from flipping.
4. Changed up the sleeves by cutting them short at half sleeves, as well as changing up the part where we switch colours.

I haven't blocked the i-cord edging for the bottom hem yet, so the sleeve is the best detail I've got.

I have a couple of misgivings about the length of it, like I mentioned above, as well as the edging that I chose, but honestly, I wanted it done. I've ripped it out enough times - the cone yarn withstood all of it so well that I'm actually quite surprised! Both yarns are singles, too! - that I really just don't want to have to tinker with it anymore. (I suppose that's what I get for tinkering with the pattern to begin with...) And the end product is definitely wearable, not to mention really light and warm (and surprisingly comfortable in that it's not itchy), so I think I can stop.

It's really a great pattern to build off of, for making a basic sweater, complete with really simple colourwork for those of us who are terrified of the idea of doing huge swathes of stranded knitting! I would definitely make this again, though probably just stick to the pattern and make a basic sweater next time.

WIPs (A.K.A. Playing Catch Up: the June & July Edition)

It's been a while since I've done much knitting or the like, or so it feels, so I'm glad I finally have something to post. Let's start out with the good news: I'm knitting a lot out of my stash!

Warning: this is going to be pretty long.

Is there such a thing as too many flounces? I think I might be hitting that point.

Mokoshi is very well-written & easy to follow, so it's not the designer's fault mine turned out rather loose. I know the reason, at least: my gauge was way off, in addition to which my gauge swatch lied to me (it's actually surprising it fits at all and isn't two times as large as it is!), so even though I tried to compensate for it, I compensated incorrectly. Knowing what I do now, I would definitely make the smallest size next time, maybe even scaling it down one more size from there. That being said, I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be this loose or if it's because I chose the wrong size/used the wrong yarn & needle size combo (went down a needle size to accommodate the linen of the Louet Euroflax). I can live with the positive ease though.

See that middle back bit that's coming out where my hands are? That's all extra!

What I'm really not 100% sold on right now is the second flounce at the bottom. Am I pushing it a bit with this super voluminous detail? And should I compound what might be an egregious decision - keeping the second flounce - by following the pattern for the fluttery cap sleeves too? I'm overstating it a bit, because I actually like it a lot, and it's just that frills aren't too much in my wardrobe at all. So it's just a question of whether to remove the second layer or not, and whether to knit the flutter sleeves or make them long sleeves with one layer of light frill at the end, in the fashion of eritml.

Vestigial, in colourway Starry Night - pretty fitting, no?

Socks! For me! Finally! Using that Eden Cottage Yarns BFL Sock that I purchased in England a while back! I've knit a pair of socks before, but they didn't really fit well and they felt pretty half-baked, to tell the truth, so I've stayed away from them till now. But no more! Apart from the slightly tight cast-on for the first sock, these fit me so well I want to wear them all the time, never mind that it's summer right now with humidexes upward of 40C some days. Truth be told, the BFL isn't as soft as I'm used to with my socks, being a bit prickly and all. I'm not sure whether that's because of the heat or if it's the fiber though. What I am positive about is that I will much appreciate these once winter rolls around.

I knit Vestigial, which is a free pattern and coincidentally offers only one size. I also could not spot where the gauge was listed in the pattern itself - I might just be blind though - so thank goodness they fit! I'm pretty smitten with the finished socks, so I'd say it was worth blindly following the pattern this time.

No pictures of the finished Summer Bralette yet. There may never be.

I set about translating the Summer Bralette pattern from Swedish - thank you Google translate! - the day it came out, cast on the day after, and finished the day after that, only to realize it was waaaaaayyy too loose. Needless to say, I didn't do a gauge swatch in between any of those steps, and although there was a nagging suspicion that the size looked way too large, I figured I might as well finish it and see what to change the second time around. The first try came out with positive ease. Not what you want from this pattern! So I got rid of the 16cm of garter stitch at the beginning & end (reducing it to 4 rows each), changed to a provisional CO, cast on half the stitches for the straps (50sts instead of 100 - I tried 75sts the first time and it was still too much), then did a 3-needle BO to the provisionally CO sts.

I do want to make a note, in case anyone else is using Google translate. It actually does a pretty good job with translating the pattern, except for some misleading parts: where it says "purl", it actually means to "knit" (you want stockinette for the most part), and when it says to "have 16 stitches wormed"/"bind off 16 stitches", it actually means that 16 stitches have already been bound off, so don't bind off another 16!

Not very good depiction of the lace here either though.

I've also started on a vintage sweater pattern that has an allover lace pattern, which the photo depicting said sweater does not actually depict at all. You can vaguely make out there's lace, but you can't for the life of you tell what the lace pattern looks like. And now you do, though admittedly not much clearer. Knitting on 2.0mm needles for a 1x1 rib is a bit torturous though, and I'm not sure I would recommend it to anyone to follow the pattern blindly as I am, especially given the lack of clear gauge - by which I mean I have no idea what the finished garment size is supposed to be, though by my own gauge of 24 sts = 4" in pattern, the finished garment will have +14" ease on me. I'm kind of doing this in good fun to see where it'll take me, but I'd probably want to just recalculate everything and give myself maybe +6" ease total for this. On the upside, I am using the Spellbound Fiber laceweight merino that I got from an installment of Fiberista Club, so that's going to be knit completely from the stash. I might have to supplement it with colourblocked sleeves or maybe the lower 3/4 of the back can be yellow? We'll see how it goes.

Finally decided on what to knit with this Llama Lace!

I waffled a bit with choosing what to knit with this, from Rhaedr to Citron before finally settling on Divinity. I actually cast on for all three of these, and there's nothing wrong with any of the patterns, but it didn't really seem to match the yarn. The cables of Rhaedr looked like they'd be lost (besides which I messed up the cables pretty early on, so I simply didn't try a second time, knowing it wasn't going to be the pattern for this yarn). And while Citron is a tried & true, I wasn't sure the Americo Llama Lace was actually going to be soft enough for my neck, not to mention I noticed I was having some difficulties breathing easily while knitting with it. I'm assuming it's due to all the fibers coming loose from the yarn that I'm subsequently inhaling, but I didn't think putting that yarn anywhere near my face for long periods of time would be a good idea. So I searched high and low for a lacy clothing pattern that I could squeeze out of my 765 yards, and Divinity's been on my list for a while, so that was that.

The one on the right.

And I also knit myself a Hitofude cardigan, which has been in constant use since it came off my needles using the Julie Asselin Merletto (in Cove) I purchased during the Lettuce Knit closing sale. I still don't have any photos of the cardigan itself, which is almost ridiculous, but seeing as it's been on me more often than not, let's excuse the lack of actual photos. Very well written, and I love the construction! Only two ends to weave in, as long as you only used one skein: the CO and the BO.


Now the slightly more painful bits:

Nips & tucks, here and there, left and right.

This has been in this state for about a month or two now. I had grand plans to wear this to the Team Up reception - I didn't make it in time due to some issues with the sewing - and now I have no particular motivation to finish it apart from having it done and out of the way, now. I also cut off a couple of inches from the original pattern, but realized that the hem is way wider than I thought, and looks better wide, so I'm going to have to undo the hem and sew an extra piece on that turns in as the hem. The collar also didn't work out at all, so that plan flew out the window pretty quick, in addition to which the lack of shaping, combined with the cotton fabric I'm using, don't work well together, giving me what looks to be a baby bump. So I've had to add vertical bust & back darts to fix that problem. Maybe if I were using something super smooth or slinky it wouldn't be as much of an issue?

Seamwork Hayden shirt... still in pieces. Crinkled after months of sitting under itself.

... So this is supposed to be Hayden. I'm 98.2% sure (+/- 1.8%) that it's too small for me. It might be a perfect fit if I could ever get it over my head and shove my arms through, but I'd never get it off again. I cut out size 36, which measurements should fit me perfectly. The realization of which got me so down I still haven't sewn it together. In addition to which I belatedly searched up reviews of the pattern and noticed a couple of negative reviews mentioning size & fit issues, so it's probably, sadly, a bust. There's still only one way to find out though. But that would mean I'd have to actually sew it up and face reality to see what I can do to fix it - uhh... cut a larger size? - and that doesn't really appeal to me currently. Now I understand why my very capable friend, Haley, who learned how to knit in an incredibly short frame of time and delved right into lace & cables after some encouragement, felt like dropped stitches and other knitting mishaps like accidental increases or decreases were such big hurdles. I assured her they aren't, at all, so maybe I should just administer the same medicine to myself: suck it up and truck through!

On that same note, I searched up reviews on the Moji pants while I was at it, because those were what I really wanted to make, and found negative reviews concerning the lack of ease in those, too! Now, I can't actually razz on Seamwork patterns just yet since I haven't technically sewn anything from it, but I'm already getting bad vibes because of the reviews, so I've temporarily cancelled my subscription. It's probably for the best, considering how much - how little - sewing I actually do.

Primrose? More like butter!

I've been working on a project inside the confines of my mind that plays with recipe weight ratios and thinking about weaving my interpretation of several recipes up. The yarn is here. I finally got the right shade of yellow for the butter (the first round of yellow might do for Meyer lemons, but it's not butter as far as butter goes in Canada, from what I know). And I have absolutely no excuse to not have even calculated exactly how to warp this up. In fact, by my own timeline, I should have already finished a couple of scarves and started applying for exhibitions and marketplace stalls by this point! Alas.

It appears as though knitting is still my game, with sewing and weaving falling far far behind just now (and spinning having fallen off the radar altogether), which is quite unfortunate, but at least I'm knitting.

Scarlet Billows Start to Spread... So Throw Yourself a Lifeline!

Scarlet billows really are starting to spread. It's much neater than it looks though.

This is a cautionary tale.

I've been drawing up a design - inspired by Mack the Knife - for a lacy red dress using a variety of red yarns from my stash (hurrah stashbusting!). Now, lace isn't really my thing; I mean, I love it, and I love working with it when they're other people's patterns, but I've never designed with lace before. But I understand how pi shawls work, so I figured that as long as the stitch counts match up, I should be fine. And in theory, I really was. Only, the first ring of lace is a 12-stitch repeat. The second one was a 20-stitch repeat. So the numbers didn't quite match when doubled, but all I needed were a couple more stitches, so add them I did, and proceeded along my merry way halfway through the stitch pattern or so, willing myself to ignore all the while that the lace doesn't match up with the first ring of lace that well... it was just a little off, every time I looked at it, but a little off enough to matter. And because I knew it would bother me endlessly, relentlessly, I ripped back. I hadn't put in a lifeline, but I've messed up enough on other projects to know how to read my knitting here! (A simple lace, thank goodness. May I tell you the secret to becoming a great knitter? Or maybe just tell you to make a million mistakes and learn to fix them all, as I've been doing and continue to do.)

White buoy of hope.

I proceeded to look up a 12-stitch repeat lace to replace that second pattern and forged right on ahead after doubling my stitches... without putting in a lifeline. A repeat and a half in, I knew I would have to rip back again: this lace was a simpler, smaller-looking version of my first lace! (And because I'm either hopelessly optimistic or an idiot, I refused to swatch that lace beforehand also, which is why I had little clue what exactly it looked like in comparison to the first.) I knew I didn't want the outer rings to be denser than the inside one - this would make no sense in terms of practicality, the inside ring being the part that would provide cover from my waist down - so hi-ho, alas, and also lackaday, this just wouldn't do! And so I tugged and pulled and silently hoped the yarn would hold - which it did - and placed all those loose stitches onto my needles again.

(Shibui Knits Sock, it's been a real pleasure working with you so far - you're a real trooper. I'm sorry to see you're discontinued. Oddly enough though, considering you're a superwash merino, I dry-felt-joined you just fine.)

I then cut some yarn, threaded a needle, and pulled that needle through all my stitches. It took all of a minute or so, if that, and if I need to rip out again, I'm more prepared. Third time's the charm, though, so here's to hoping I won't even have to use it.

Frost Flowers Bloom!

I've released my first pattern! Fully written up and available in my ravelry store with a 20% discount from now until August 8 23:59 EST to celebrate the release!

With this, I have at last completed one of my new year's resolutions for 2014! Hurrah! I've already strayed completely off the road for another one of those resolutions (it was bound to happen, really...), so I'm pretty excited that I have kept to something.

I have also finished my disastrous blanket, so just need to get that photographed along with the first scarf I have been neglecting to document. I have worn it out and about though, and the colour has - rather magically - fit with everything so far! It crinkles pretty easily, but I think that just gives it character.

The blanket is actually now not quite so disastrous as it seemed to me then (mostly because I'm finished with it and will no longer need to work another one of them again), and I quite like the end result. I couldn't stuff one last thin clasped-weft section at the end, but that's fine. It looks fine as is, and I'm happy with the results, especially considering all the trials I had to pass to get to it! I counted all the broken warp threads afterwards and they totalled 23. 5 of which were all within centimetres of each other. So I wove them all in, and now it's done! I've given it to my father, and it's lying across the couch now, waiting for winter to settle in...

Recipe for Silver Linings

So I recently received a message on ravelry asking me for help regarding the Tucked Woollen Dress pattern from Vogue. Now, even if you have a copy of the pattern it probably wouldn't do you much good. It's only sized up to ages 4-5, after all. So I decided to write up a basic outline for anyone who wants to try to recreate my dress!

Seeing that my written notes are kind of a disaster, especially for this dress since so many things had to be ripped back and re-knit, I decided to type up a really rough recipe complete with diagram to try to help out anyone who might want to knit up my version of this dress!

Follow these links for the outline and the full-sized diagram respectively (since the diagram in the word document may be a bit small). Enjoy (or suffer endlessly trying to figure it out)! And feel free to ask me if you don't understand what's going on: I will do my best to help you out.

Look for the Silver Lining

It's sweltering though, so maybe not all the time...

What? What do you mean it might not be the best idea to wear a 100% wool dress with half sleeves in the dead humid heat of summer? But I just finished this lovely thing!

So I finally finished the silver linings dress!! Remember how I started here and promptly ran into problems here? I absolutely LOVE this dress! I know I say that about most of the stuff I knit, but this dress is really one of those things I can see myself wearing all the time. (Maybe switching between this and the frost flowers dress, actually. They both occupy a large share of my heart.) And it's not even just because I made it and I have some sort of attachment to it as its creator. Nor is it because I ran into so many troubles and had to rip out so many times that I feel like the end product has to justify all that work (... maybe a little. But only the tiniest bit.). Enough of that. I'll just enumerate its qualities:

• A-line dress with body-hugging bodice. Hits a couple inches above the knee, and should actually just hit above the knee after blocking.
• Set-in sleeves that actually fit just right! Look at those pictures - no bagginess! And you'll just have to take my word for it that they aren't tight. (I actually had to reknit it because the armscye was too small the first time around.)
• The button placket at the back! Adorable!
• Those tucks! They aren't loud or obnoxious at all. They could definitely try to speak up a little more, but that's just because the yarn is a bit more outspoken than them.
• No restrictions at all with that skirt (see picture below).
• Did I mention it has POCKETS?

More pictures on ravelry.

Take that, summer heat!

Pool

It's pooling it's pooling it's pooling it's pooling it's pooling!!! I just started alternating the skeins to transition into the next one slowly, and it's not like I didn't notice the pooling before this, but it's giving the dress a bit of a striped look to it in some areas and more prominently a splotch or two of lighter areas, and I'm not sure how I feel about it... I know the yarn is going to soften and drape beautifully after I wash and block it, but I haven't had this much trouble with colours pooling before. The second skein is much less variegated and more overall medium grey (the first skein was medium grey mixed with lighter greys). In hindsight, I should have started off with the darker skein, then the more mottled one, and then used the lightest one for last. I just thought the first skein was less all over the place.
I am considering ripping back and just reknitting those 7" or so, but this is lace weight on 2.5mm needles. Well. It's still a bit stripey for the part where I started alternating the skeins, so. So. Where's the silver lining?

Silver Lining

Quite a while ago, I borrowed Knitting in Vogue No.3 from the public library and was really taken by the Tucked Woollen Dress. Understandably, I was also quite dismayed when I realized the largest size offered was a 24" chest. (Which, in hindsight, may actually have been for the best, seeing as how the pattern would probably not have translated well into adult sizes.) So I resolved at the time - I queued the pattern May 2012, so it's been almost a whole 2 years now! - to size it up and make my own. I would plug in different measurements, work out the gauge I'm going to work at, and recalculate everything. (This isn't actually that difficult. At all. Simple multiplication and division.)
2 years down the road (present day), I've realized that this pattern would probably not look quite as adorable on me as it does on the toddler in the picture. The tucks on the skirt would have to be huge to keep the proportions on me, and puff sleeves aren't the most flattering look I could ask for. But I still adored those tucks and that button-up back, so I decided that I could just take those two design elements and run with it! So now, armed with simple math skills, a calculator, sketches, a tape measure, and what knitting know-how I've accumulated, I finally sat down to finish some final sketches, make a gauge swatch (blocked and measured!), and did some math. I'm using the madtosh lace in charcoal and hoping that I'll have enough! I should - it's almost 3000 yards I've got right now, so I'd be really worried if that wasn't enough. But I still bought another skein at the Knitter's Frolic, just in case. It's a lot darker and a different tone compared to my other 3 skeins, but it's a last resort thing, so it'll be fine. I'll use it for the sleeves if anything.

Speaking of which, although I thought to myself, "This madtosh stuff isn't anything special, apart from the gorgeous colour, maybe, but even that other yarn companies have... it's a little overrated" while I was knitting up the swatch, my opinion took a 180 after I washed it and blocked it out! It's so ridiculously soft after washing and blocking and just beautiful! While I'm sure other yarns have that going for them as well (Araucania, my love), madelinetosh has made my favourites list.