Myrna? And a wrap!

Guess what, guess what? I’ve knitted (knit?) myself a second garment! Eeeee! (That was a quiet squeal of excitement, by the way.)

Turns out this knitting lark is kinda addictive. Just like sewing. Clearly, I need to diversify my stash to include both wool and fabric now (as well as patterns, trims, sewing machines….. Hmmm…. Maybe I just need a bigger house…. Oops!)

Anyway, I made this one (and the dress that I’m wearing with it) for the Outfit Along 2014, hosted by Lauren from Lladybird and Andi from Untangling Knots.

Such a great idea – sewing up a dress and knitting a cardigan to go with it. How could I not join in?

Lauren and Andi had chosen a dress and cardigan pattern to run a sew-along and knit-along with, or you could choose your own. I decided to make up the knitting pattern they’d picked – the brand new Myrna cardigan pattern from Andi Satterlund. Such a cute pattern – it’s got short sleeves, a v neck, eyelet details around the edges, and a keyhole detail at the back neckline. Plus, it’s mostly knit in stockinette (?), which means not too complicated for me as my second full project!

For the dress though, there was no way I was gonna be able to squeeze ‘the bump’ into the fitted-waist Simplicity summer dress that had been chosen. So I made a knit wrap dress instead. Which I can’t tell you much about, since it’s a bit of Secret Sewing (yay!), but there are a couple of pics of it towards the end of the post as a sneak preview. 😉

My little sis took part in the Outfit Along as well – we bought our yarn together (a gorgeous wool and alpaca blend from Skeinz, an online yarn store in New Zealand – I got the Lava colourway and Jen got the Forest one). The Myrna was Jen’s first knitted garment, and my second, so we muddled along together, jumping onto YouTube or Skyping our mother (who is a fantastic knitter!) when we got stuck. It was really nice having someone making the same project at the same time – towards the end we organised a couple of DVD-and-knitting nights to make sure we had some dedicated knitting time and got it all done in time! (So much fun in fact we may have cast on our second sister-knit-together project as soon as we finished our Myrna cardigans….)

I got to learn a lot while making up Myrna. How to do eyelets, and the keyhole at the back. And the big one – how to do short rows! The sleeves are shaped with short rows. Which aren’t actually all that hard, although it took me a while to be able to figure out where to start and stop each one without having to obsessively count every stitch. But, you know – progress! I also got a lot better at sewing in the ends, although I suspect I’m doing it wrong, so will need to figure that out at some point….

I also figured, what the heck, and kinda may have sorta modified the pattern a bit as I went along. Coz you know, it’s my second project, so I must know what I’m doing, right? (Yeah. Right.) Since I’m a size different up top from my waist/hip, I knitted up the Myrna in a size Small, and graded it out to a size Medium at the waist. And you know what? My maths calculations actually worked! (Or at least I think they did. It looks pretty good when it’s off. I have no idea if it’s actually the right size around the waist, since I can’t exactly do it up at the moment! So that moment of truth will have to wait a few more months.)

The buttons are some pretty ones I found at Made Marion (because despite the rather large collection of buttons I have, it turned out I had none that would go with this cardigan. Clearly, I need to stash more of them so I have ones for every occasion.) The dark ring is actually translucent, which is pretty cool, although that detail gets a bit lost when they’re attached to a garment sadly.

Now, I must admit this cardi is looking a little bit tight in a couple of areas. But that’s coz my ribs have done that expanding-a-full-size thing due to pregnancy (seriously, they do that, bodies are strange things), plus my bust has also grown. (Too much information? Ah well.) So it’s technically a size too small at the moment, plus the bump means it’s not exactly sitting at the right spot in the front. But hey, it’s the right size for when I’m not preggers, and I’m not pregnant a lot more than I am pregnant, so therefore it’s the right size for a knitted-by-me cardigan. 😉

So, the dress.

I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about it yet (secret sewing and all that). So I’m just gonna let the pics give you a sneak peek instead. 😉

(I wasn’t even planning on doing that, but I stoopidly got all excited about making up the pattern and made it to match the cardigan for the Outfit Along, and then thought “oops! Should have made a pattern I’m allowed to talk about!” but it was too late. So hey, a sneak peek you all get instead!)

(Of course, it would fit a lot better without a baby bump in the way, but whatevs.)

And there we have it – an outfit of a dress and cardigan! Yay!

Right, what to make next…. I do like me these challenges. I think next on my sewing agenda will be something for the birthday month challenge over on The Monthly Stitch…… (Do you know of any other sewing challenges coming up? The list for August is looking rather empty at the moment, so I suspect I’ve missed seeing a few announcements?!!)