@Love_Knitting competition "Britain’s Next Top Knitwear Designer" Finalist

In late January I started a top secret knitting project and for once I kept it off the Ravelry radar.

I am going to knit myself a wedding dress!!!!

I sketched out some ideas and decided to experiment with some cabling.  Then we lost the venue for our wedding and had to move our Dutch barge, Morgenster that we had been renovating.  Given the wedding was delayed, somehow my idea morphed from a dress to a jumper with no cables.

I was reading Knitty Blog's WWW which mentioned: Britain's Next Top Knitwear Designer Competition that Love Knitting were holding this year.  By this time it was mid February  The deadline was the end of April.  I had nothing on the needles, 12 balls of Sirdar Softspon DK and the fragments of an idea for a unique jumper.

In January I had knit Colour Craving a garter stitch shawl shaped using yarn over holes.  I had really enjoyed the ease and speed at which this shawl took quite an unusual shape. This would be the technical inspiration for my jumper shape.

So with excitement and a reason to get my knit on I cast on...

Some time later I had a pair of sleeves and a yoke like none I'd seen before.

I thought about stopping here and calling it a cropped top.  I decided I'd never wear it, it needed to be longer in the body. 

I picked up stitches in the selvedge and joined to knit in the round. I didn't want to slow progress by knitting in garter stitch in the round.  My purling is still not as fast as I'd like.

When the shortest side reached to waist length I again thought about stopping.

I cast off!

After a few days of looking at it I still knew it needed to be longer for me to get much wear out of it. 

I really liked the seamed look I had created by picking up from the garter stitch selvedge so following the same approach I picked up stitches.

I decided to switch back to garter stitch so as to avoid the stockinette roll.  Embracing the asymmetrical I decide to add in a new slant. 

I knitted a whole heap of garter stitch for the slanted hem, in record time. The deadline was getting closer...

I tried it on the dummy... success I love it, it looks great on the dummy and vaguely resembled the idea I started out with.

It was now April 20th, I had kept jotted down notes as I went, but I hadn't typed them up as a pattern.  A few days later I finally forced myself to buckle down and write up my pattern, a couple of days after that and I was happy enough with my write up. 

Only a few things left to do, cast off, sew up and try on.  Casting off went quickly.  Sewing up a doddle, I hate sewing up so I had designed the pattern to only require one tiny seam on the kimono arm. 

I tried the jumper on, STILL NOT LONG ENOUGH for me to love it.  On the shorter side it came down to my hip bone, which was fine for a top, but I really like my garments long. It looked beautiful over a dress, just not quite right with jeans. 

As the end of April was upon on me and I loved the garment, it was flattering on a size 14-16, just not so much on me as a 16-18.  I submitted it as it was.

Watch this space, I may just make an alternate hem for the original pattern...