tilted duster

Hello, how was your weekend ? The concert on saturday was amazing, 3 and something hours of very good music by the Cure, and I was jumping and dancing like crazy the whole time. I don't go to that many big concerts these days so this one was especially worth it.

I did finish a lot of things this weekend, and the first I want to show you is the Tilted Duster. I'm totally in love with this piece, everything about it is perfect, the fit, the yarn, the color ... Talking about color, this was extremely difficult to photograph, and I'm not entirely sure that the color is shown accurately here, but that didn't stop me from taking a lot of photos, as you can see...




Pattern: Tilted Duster, by Nora Gaughan, from Interweave Knits Fall 07
Yarn: Katia Fine Top, used double stranded (9 skeins)
Needles: 4.5 mm
size: 32






About the pattern and some technical details ... it is a very snug fit but I had to make very little changes to suit me. I used some discontinued stash yarn I had and was terribly afraid to run out of it before the end, so I decided to knit the whole body first before doing the sleeves just in case. I figured it would be better to have 3/4 sleeves than a shorter skirt (of course, in the end I did have some leftover yarn so all that anxiety was for nothing). Anyway, I made it to the 4th row of the 10th repeat on the skirt and decided the length was fine this way. Also, I made the collar about one inch shorter. And finally the sleeves were done as in the pattern except I added 4 extra rows before starting the final bind off otherwise I think they would've been too small.



For this garment the blocking did wonders. My curled up edges disappeared almost completely, and the skirt drape improved a lot. I did redo the seaming of the sleeve caps twice (my first try was quite pitiful), and the placement of the buttons about a zillion times but now I'm just very happy with the final result. I do have a feeling I'm going to wear this a lot, so I'm hoping this yarn stands the test of time (and frequent usage).