Unoridginal Dress

At last, the knitted dress is finished. 

Yarn is blue faced leicester double knit from WoolyKnits.  Bought naked and dyed with Wiltons cake dye.  This was done last summer and the colour broke so I didn't get the solid purple I planned but instead this fabulous variagated yarn.

Yarn held double so its a heavy aran/light chunky weight, and it took the entire kilo of yarn to knit this.  Its an homage to a pattern seen on Ravelry for a sweater in sock yarn with these purl ribs, which was in an old Vogue knitting magazine I think.  Collar is knit in a circle and the entire garment is then knitted down from there, so no seams at all.

Collar has three knit rows between each row of purl, as does the waist area, which appears to now be the hip area thanks to gravity, blocking or just sheer incompetence.  It matters not though, I still like it fine.  The sleeves and body are six rows of knit to one row of purl.

The sleeves are possibly a tad snug but no way am I going to unpick this again.  Its a "keeping warm in the house" dress so its fine as it is.  I think its smart enough to wear outside, though its a touch shorter than I'd have liked in an ideal world so thick tights or leggings under it are a necessity not an optional extra.  :)  At least for now.  With a kilo of yarn in the dress, it may well become significantly longer as time goes on, just from the effect of gravity.  We shall see.  Overall I'm quite pleased with how it came out, particularly considering it was very much a "wing it and see what happens" item rather than an item knit from a commercial pattern.   I must admit I do love the contiguous method of knitting which requires no seams and have been pleased with almost all the items I've knit using the method.

Next knitting project is already cast on.  Another Swirl cardigan from the Knit Swirl book by Sandra McIver.  It doesn't look much yet, just a snakey circle of knitting twisted around the cable, so I'll show that one off a bit later when there's a bit more to show.

I also bought three new patterns today; all from VeryBusyMonkey designs.  I got two shawls and a sock pattern.  One shawl matches the sock pattern, the other is from her new shawl collection.  There is a knitalong for shawls from her latest collection starting soon over on Ravelry and I plan to knit my new pattern, the geology shawl, for that.   Not only is the shawl very attractive, but my father was an amateur geologist and I have studied geology to A level standard, so it seemed meant to be.  Can't cast that one on until July first though... and I've not quite decided on the yarn yet for it either.  But with a trip to Woolfest coming up next week, I may hold fire on the final yarn choice until I get back with my treasures. 

The summer dress is moving forward too.  I've perfected the muslin and hope to have a dress to show off by the end of this weekend.