Almost two months since my last update – Belle and I didn’t talk much in that time. She was almost done, I just had to unravel and re-knit the cuffs to make them bigger. But you know how it is – sometimes the final step seems the hardest.
I picked up a couple of extra stitches and used a bigger needle to make them looser, plus added length to them as I liked how that looked better when I tried in on last time.
Then I sewed in some ends, and picked up a few dropped stitches (where did they come from and WHY?!), before soaking, spinning and blocking.
It’s such a weird garment! I made that more apparent by blocking into straight lines – I wanted to get a stretch on it to give it as much drape as possible. That’s the whole idea of the garment.
Then I tried it on and oh gosh I really did achieve drape! It feels significantly bigger. It feels soft and comfortable. I think I underestimated how much I’d be able to block out and added too much length in the body? I expected the yarn to shrink a bit and that is not what occurred. In particular the waistband is extremely relaxed…
I enjoyed posing in it. When I first put it on, I thought I’d managed to split a seam or something at the neck. There was such a sharp corner on it – looking back at the blocking picture I can see where I drew it up into a big spike! I’m not certain if I should tighten it up a bit – unraveling the cast off and re-doing wouldn’t take that long.
This is Belle (Ravelry link) by Cocoknits (designer’s site). I went quite far off piste and used a 3 ply yarn (Tibet Tweed from Yeoman Yarns) which is like a heavy lace. It took me nine months and about 200g of yarn.
I knitted the body on 4mm needles, and the hem on 4.5mm with the yarn held triple. I did the cuffs on 5.5mm needles, still held triple. In hindsight… maybe more stitches and smaller needles would have been a better choice.
I cast off the neck with 6mm needles to make it as much of a cowl as possible. I followed the largest size with regard to casting on, but freestyled the number of stitches allocated to the hem vs the side seam.
I’ve added this post to the Unraveled Wednesday linkup, with thanks to Kat for hosting.
The Crafty Yarnster 