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!