Well... I beavered away in fits and starts at the Lorinda... I actually knitted all the way through Thursday night to ensure that it was off the needles in time for this post. Just enough to model it. There's lots to say about this project.
First, the pattern is well written, and any (very occasional) difficulty I had was entirely on my side of things. Remember, I am having to reacquaint myself with terminology after a gap of nearly forty years... and working with circular needles might save on seaming, but golly, it can get cumbersome! The yarn I used was a cheapy from Amazon (I think I got ten x 100 g x 300 m balls for about fifteen quid - bargain!). I used four and not quite half a ball for this project. 100% acrylic, spun in Turkey, so pretty good quality for the price point, and it ran smoothly with very little snagging. However, it is also very soft and lacks any loft at all, so stitch definition a bit iffy. Hopefully, the blocking on completion will smooth some of that out. The bottom-up production was okay... but I did struggle a wee bit with the sleeve attaching, just over the initial three or four rows, after which things ran without too much hitch, but good grief - at over 370 stitches per round, it became a bit of a slog.
I did have to fiddle around with needle sizes to meet gauge. Not something I normally concern myself with, but I wanted to honour this very pretty pattern. Due to the yarn not really meeting the DK fullness for the suggested needle size, I ended up with a 4.5mm (and 4mm for the collar band). When I make this pattern again (and I will, because it is really quite a fun knit and I learned lots from doing it), it will be with a much better yarn... and probably two sizes smaller. Although you see me model this unblocked and without a button band, it is clearly oversized on me. I do have to make allowance for the ridiculous frontage my bra suffers with shaping, but the problem wth that is that often the rest of any garment is then just hanging off me like a tent. I've learned to live with this fact of life, but what I found is that this pattern has rather generous positive ease, and I could, in fact, have stuck to the smaller needles and still have room to spare! I'm almost afraid to block the thing, for fear it will then only fit a hippopotamus. Perhaps just a standard pressing. Due to the front panels more than meeting in the middle without any additional work, I am going to leave off the button band altogether and simply run a crochet slip stitch to finish the edging... I may just put one button up top... This finished article is cosy and comfy and will be grand in the van, but as the yarn lacks integrity, it is not quite as dressy as it could be.
As someone who likes to freewheel most of the time when creating, this obeying-guidelines project was really good for me, and I do recommend it... so here it is at the nearly-but-not-quite-there-yet stage (and sorry about the face... I was concentrating on the camera and forgot to smile!)
