What I made, by Sharon

I've been knitting the Alpine Bloom dress for a month. Heavy laceweight on 3mm needles. On Sunday night I tried it on to see if it was long enough and discovered two things: It was time for the bottom and, despite being commercial yarn and all from the same dye lot, there are clear differences in colours from the different balls. Despite knowing I won't wear it like this I finished it. It was about 20 rows of lace for the bottom and one sleeve. Now I have to decide what to do. I know I don't have the energy to rip and reknit. I could try to dip dye it, but that may well wreck the whole thing, particularly because the yarn is partly cotton. I could rip it back and have a pretty top, but I don't want a top, I want a dress. I could embroider something on it, or duplicate stitch some matching flowers to call the eye away. I could ignore it and wear it anyway.  I could always stand in dappled shadow so that the stripes don't show. The stripes did soften after a wash, b...

 As documented here, I spent the last three weeks knitting a dress . It was quite a fun knit while I was doing it - stripes and loads and loads of stocking stitch on the round is my idea of fun. The drama came at the end - the hem curled like crazy. Of course the hem curled, it's 5 rounds of 5x1 rib. I blocked the body before deciding what to do with sleeves. It miraculously stopped curling, but was rather too long. then I finished the sleeves, blocked it again and it's the perfect length. No idea how that happened.  Meanwhile I used the left-over yarn to make my first project from Kate Davies' Summer of Mystery Club - the  Little Venice Hat . It came out a little slouchier than expected, but I love a slouchy hat, so it's a win. I didn't knit them to wear them as a matching set, and the first time I put them on together was for these photos. Separately I love both these items - together they look like a sleep set! Needless to say I won't be wearing them togethe...

I finally got photos of my Ancasta Dress . It's three weeks since I finished it, and I've been procrastinating the photos. It took me a full week after I blocked it to even try it on. There are a few reason s: 1) The weather finally started to warm up, and this is quite a warm dress 2) When I queued it, I imagined wearing it to work. I'm getting the feeling I won't be back in the office this year, at the earliest it will be on the first day of summer.  3) While there are many ways around this, there are (technically) only four reasons to leave the house, and since taking photos of a dress is not exercise, caring, work or shopping it meant choosing our location carefully. But I am forever happy that I have access to my balcony for this second lockdown, so taking photos out there made sense. The dress itself was a joy to knit. Th e cables where intuitive, it grew steadily and I love the way the (now discontinued) Buachaille yarn knits up. It is a tiny bit rough against th...

I finished Greis dress on Sunday ... well I say I finished it, but the ends took me hours on Tuesday night. Still, I'm really happy with it, and thrilled that it never had time to get boring. I highly recommend doing a big project like this while on holidays, and having lots of knitting time. I think I might do another dress in the Christmas / New year period next year. I really love it. I only made two changes: 1) I lengthened it. I want to be able to wear it to work without tights underneath, and even at my (short) height, it would have been two short. I blocked it when it was about 5 centimeters short of the 66 I wanted for the body. I grew the extra distance, and ended up the perfect length.The Buachialle yarn also softened and bloomed noticeably on blocking. 2) I knit the smallest size, but went one size up for the sleeves. I could have gone two sizes up. I've got CrossFitters arms! And that was it! I know I've ranted about Kate Davies pattern's i...

I finished the Still Light dress in exactly three weeks, which I thought was bizarrely quick, even for me. Then I had my customary stress attack about whether it would fit, blocked it and wore it to Leon's mother's 80th birthday celebration in Ballarat on Saturday. For those of you not from around here, Ballarat is significantly colder than Melbourne, which is why I'm wearing all of the woolens in some of these photos.  I knit the pattern pretty much as written, the mods were: I did a tubular cast on and cast on 8 stitches less than the pattern specified, and then added and extra increase in the raglan section. I like the slightly higher neckline. The pattern has pockets, which thrills me, and I decided to knit them in a contrasting colour, just for fun. I love the pockets, they are at exactly the right height to slide my hands in. This dress is so comfortable and easy to wear, I jut love it. I'm tempted to knit four more, in different colours, and t...

I spent an awful lot of time thinking about the neckline of Still Light , before I picked up the needles. As written it's quite a wide neckline, and I wanted it a tad higher. I was also worried about the ribbing flaring. There are various solutions to this, but the most obvious seemed to be a tubular cast on. There are different types of tubular cast on, and I chose a very simple one that makes a firm edge. I also choose to start with 8 stitches less. I increased up to the correct size before joining in the round. Hopefully this will narrow the neckline. I'm quite worried about the sizing, I've got an 86 cm bust, so I'm knitting the 90cm. I tried to try it on when I got to the 80cm size, but I don't think learnt anything. My gauge is perfect AFTER blocking, and slightly larger before blocking, so who really knows how it is going to come out. There is a weird thing about how this pattern is written, which is that after the side markers are established the ...

Welcome to Yarnalong for June. This month I am knitting and reading things that I've been meaning to get around to for ages. The best thing is both of them were worth the wait!  I'm knitting the Still Light Tunic . I've been wanting to knit a dress since early this year. I bought the yarn in April, swatched and then just didn't cast on. I finally started it last week, and it's growing nicely. I'm enjoying it, and if it works out like I hope it wil;l be a useful addition to my wardrobe. I'm reading Station 11 . Everyone was reading this is 2016, and I had it in my "to be read" list, but I was a bit burnt out on post-apocalyptic fiction. The only reason I actually started it was because it had been on my Kindle for ever, and I thought I should read or delete it. Despite my initial lack of enthusiasm this book had me by the second page. It's engaging, and interesting and character driven and I can't believe I have to go to work, when ...