It's done, it's done! After ten months of being on the needles, I have finally cast off my Still Light Tunic! It wasn't without one last "when knitting attacks" bit of pain, as my first attempt at casting off meant that it was too tight to walk in... I carefully undid the cast-off edge and redid it using the K2tog method and an even larger needle. Now it is perfect!
Can you tell from the look on my face that I'm pleased with it? I really, really am!
I pretty much stuck to the pattern as written, but I changed the order of working the instructions. As soon as I had split the sleeves, I worked on the sleeves until they were done before returning to work the rest of the body - I couldn't face the thought of turning the sleeves each round with the whole weight of the dress on my needles, and this was (in my humble opinion) much easier! I did the same with the pockets... As soon as I'd separated off the pocket stitches, I put the body on hold and completed the pockets. Quite apart from the issue of knitting small rounds with more than 400g of dress hanging off the needles, I knew that I would want to cast this off and wear it immediately! I've written before about my impatience at the end of a project, and this was a good way to stave it off.
I also just move the pocket shaping a tiny bit closer together - the markers were just moved together by a few stitches on each side. Nothing too significant though.
I do need to do something about sewing the pockets into the inside of the dress, as at the moment, it looks great when my hands are in the pockets (and why would they want to be anywhere else - it's warm and snuggly in there!!!), but they shift around a bit otherwise and the pattern does suggest stitching them down. I have to admit it makes me a bit nervous that I'm going to make a mess of the whole thing, but I'm sure that's not the case! I'll wear it for a bit while I think about it...
Now the only thing to do is to work out how to make the dress super-cat-repellent as he is already looking at me as if he might want to come and snuggle up to the new dress!
The yarn is Fyberspates Ethereal 4ply (65% cashmere, 35% silk; 400m/100g hanks) - the base has changed somewhat since I got mine, but Jeni has some of the new version in the shop at the moment in a beautiful plum colour: 60% cashmere, 40% silk; 400m/100g hanks
It was a pleasure to work with, and my dress took 4.25 skeins. Pure luxury!
The pattern is by Veera Välimäki, and is available for download. I did find in some areas that the pattern was a bit minimal. As a knitter I would have appreciated many more stitch counts, as they help me to decide if I want to tweak sizing, and also help me to check whether I've done the required number of increases or decreases. For such a popular design, I'm surprised that this sort of detail wasn't included. That said, the pattern wasn't incorrect, and I'm very pleased with my finished dress.
As always, my progress notes and pictures can all be found over on my Ravelry project page: Jen's Ethereal Sweater Dress (luckily it's not actually ethereal...!)
I guess I'd better get on with Mum's Christmas socks now, hadn't I?!
