Dapple, the knitted dress, is done!
So my Dapple is finished. Many hours and 13 balls of yarn later, and all I've got is a whopping big case of CPA, otherwise known as Completed Project Apathy.
I really cannot figure out if I like this dress or not. Even though the dress is fitted, I feel like I'm drowning in it. The baggy sleeves certainly don't help! When I first saw the photos my initial thought was "Oh my word, I'm wearing a big purple cabled sack!", so I scurried over to the mirror to double-check the sackiness, but didn't think it looked too bad. Maybe it's one of those outfits that look better in real life? And let's face it, I'm no model! Maybe if I had legs up to here, was better endowed in the bosom department and learnt how to do my hair properly I would rock it, but at the moment it's more Cable Loss than Kate Moss.
On the plus side, I love the colour, and the cables are pretty cool. But then again the neckline is way too wide for me, and the overall design silhouette makes me feel a lot wider than I actually am. Gah! Do I like the darn thing or not? I think it definitely needs a belt, to break up the upper width.
It also didn't help that the cable pattern graph in the book was wrong. But no problem - there was an errata insert that gave the correct graph symbols. Except, darn it, they were wrong too! I spent a couple of hours swatching, exclaiming at intervals "What am I doing WRONG? I know I can be a dunderhead a times, but surely I'm not that stupid!" Finally I jumped onto ravelry and discovered that the errata was also incorrect. D'oh! So if you want to make the dress, the corrections for the cable pattern can be found here. Nobly I have suffered so you don't have to. You can thank me later. Chocolates are always nice.
So that, my friends, is the tale of Dapple. Well, I guess you win some and you lose some. That's the problem with knitting - a whole lot of work can go into a project, only to find the final result is more "meh" than "look at meeeee!" At least with sewing projects you can more easily try things on as you go, and it's usually only a couple of days work down the drain if it doesn't work out, rather than weeks for knitting.
The more I look at these photos the more undecided I feel. Keep? Unravel? eBay? Can. Not. Decide. At. All. I feel I ought to like it just because there is over 1.1 kilometres of yarn in the darn thing!
Ok, over to you: thumbs up or thumbs down? Be kind - this whole Dapple drama has left my knitting ego feeling rather fragile!
Project Details
Pattern: Dapple by Kim Hargreaves, from the book Nectar
Yarn: 13 balls of Sublime Cashmere Merino Silk Aran in shade 0226, purchased from Sunspun
Needles: 4.5mm, 5mm straight needles and 4mm and 4.5mm circular needles Read more...



































