Monday, June 30, 2014

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!

Thursday, June 5, 2014

The Rose

 
More pictures on ravelry.

I actually finished this a while back, but only got around to taking pictures of it yesterday. It's ridiculously soft and a lovely shade of pink (I did not alternate skeins at all, but they're all more or less the same; I think one skein was a little darker overall than the other ones, but it wasn't too noticeable, as you can - or can't, rather - see), and I can't wait for fall and winter to come rolling on back so I can wear it! I am a little concerned about pilling, or at least lots of fuzz developing with more wear... but we'll see. I definitely want to work with this yarn again, but it's a little pricey, so I don't think I will purchase any more of it unless there's a huge sale or something.

In the end, I ran out of the pink (I used every last yard of it, save for the gauge swatch) and had to cut into a skein of Mostaza for the side pockets. You can't see them here, but if you go to the ravelry page, there are a few more pictures, with pockets and everything. The pockets looked like strawberries while I was knitting it up and there weren't that many rounds of green-yellow yet - so adorable!

Knitting in continental was a lot easier to adjust to than I thought it would be, which was a nice surprise. I still can't claim any amount of confidence in my purling and casting off, but I think I've got the knitting down pat.