Sunday, July 13, 2008

It's raining and I'm blocking

It's raining, raining, raining... :( But thanks to that you can enjoy a new blog entry. Instead of going to my yoga class I'm sitting here and putting something together just for your entertainment. :D

Pattern: Rebecca no. 36, originally in yellow
Yarn: ggh yarn "Tara", 72 % cotton, 28 % polyamid, 100 m/ 50 g (that's the orignal yarn, I seldom use the original yarn, but I happened to see the dress in the yarn shop and the owner convinced me that it would look good on me, so my resistance melted like icecream in the sun.)
Price: not sure, less than 50 € but since I have two balls of the orange yarn left, I should look for the receipt so I can return it. In the magazine the retail price is stated as 44.55 € for the kit.
Amount: theoretically 400 g of the orange yarn and 50 g of the white yarn, but like I said, I have two balls left and my gauge is correct.
Needle size: 5 mm
Size: 34/36

Comment: I would recommend that you use 60 cm and 80 cm, instead of 60 cm and 100 cm long circular needles. And start with the short circular needle and not the long one.

There is one minor mistake in the instructions (sorry, I just checked them, but I can't find it now), but it's not that important. I think the stitch count somewhere was wrong.

The dress is tight, not like in one of the pictures in the magazine where it seems to have more ease around the waist (the one I'm thinking of is not on the website, only in the magazine). I had to include some short rows around the bust.

Not sure why I had gone for a knitted dress. Knit with 5 mm (!) needles. And as we all know the line between uniqute and plain weird is thin! I'm not afraid of wearing knitted stuff, but I do not want to look like an esoteric-Birkenstock-wearing-eco-sociologist (I'm pissed off with a certain sociologist, so I felt like including an over-simplifying insult against sociologists. :D Even in high school I was convinced that the majority of sociologists talk too much and are weird. I also bet they don't shower very often. Some people seem to confuse eco and natural with smelly). I also don't really like tie-dye. Now, go and hate me. :D

It looked nice in the window though and it seemed to be a quick knit (it definitely is). I wanted a very mindless project and this one suits the purpose. Good ol' stockinette in the round (not much of a fan of knitting in the round though, you never get to an end, it goes on and on and on...) That was also one reason why I bought the original yarn, I simply didn't want to go hunting for the right yarn and then recalculate everything, because my gauge would be off. I think, I have a reluctance to knitting sweaters, because when substituting yarn I never get the right gauge, which means I have to do many calculations to adapt the yarn to the pattern.

The yarn is ok. I usually prefer 100 % natural yarns, but cotton is a very heavy fiber, it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to use a 100 % cotton yarn for a dress. Recently I have developed a fondness for orange and this one is a quite nice shade. The original yellow is a bit bland in reality. The yarn is also available in a couple of other colors, but in my opinion they are all a bit too bland for a summer dress.

Orange dress Orange dress

This is another Swallotail Shawl. Follow the link for more details about the pattern. This one is quite old, but I never posted a picture of it. Having been in use for a quite a while it had shrunk a bit and needed re-stretching, so I reblocked it yesterday. It's one of my favorite knitted items.

Yarn: Misti Alpaca lace
Color: natural white
Needle size: 3.5 mm

Swallowtail

Still on the needles: Feather and Fan Shawl by Eugen Beugler from A Gathering of Lace. Same yarn as I had used here.

Feather and Fan Shawl


That one is actually finished and I was about to block it this morning, but I didn't have enough of the jigsaw pieces that I use instead of a blocking board. At the moment it's drying outside on our balcony.

Pattern: Lilly's Leaf Shawl

More details when it's blocked.

Lilly's Leaf Shawl

Instead of blocking Lilly's Leaf Shawl I'm now blocking the Mystery Stole. Yeah, I'm fast, faster than a ray of light. :D I did block it already, but since I did it the lazy way, I wasn't happy with the result, so I decided to do it again. But since I somehow got less and less convinced of its wearability I put it off until now.

6 Kommentare:

Elemmaciltur said...

Sheesh, how many times do I need to tell you that the dress looks great and it doesn't look tight at all. What did J. say about it? ;-)

Anonymous said...

Das Kleid sieht wirklich toll aus. ich wäre froh ich könnte es tragen. Probiere es doch einfach aus - wenn der Regen vorbei ist. Du wirst Blicke auf Dich ziehen. And - by the way - Birkenstock strickerinnen tragen keine Farben ;D

Carol said...

oh vaya que trabajo me ha encantado ese vestidito tejido esta precioso!!!!!! se te luce de maravilla......


Cariños que pases un lindo fin de semana....

deknit said...

that dress looks awesome! you should be wearing it all the time :-)

Anonymous said...

I stopped by to see what you are up to at your site. I didn't realize that knitting could be so complicated (I know nothing about knitting).

Obviously, you know what you are doing and your creations are beautiful.

projektleiterin said...

Of course, I know what I'm doing?! Grrr... And you're supposed to subscribe to my blog (big "subscribe" button in menu bar) and check every day if I have posted something new. Although once a month would probably also be enough. :D


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