My first real garment was done in October from the “Vintage Knits” book by Sarah Dallas. I was imediately drawn to this lacy camisole. I picked up the specified yarn from Rowan at an online yarn store. I bought yarn for two of them, though so far I have only completed one. Since it was October I was in a fall mood with yarn colors called “Spice” accented by “Mocha”. When I started this projected I started regretting yarn color. I vowed to never go “yarn crazy”, picking out unique colors that have no real place in actual clothing. I was thinking I was going a little “yarn crazy” for a while till I finished. The accenting brown picot edge with complimenting brown silk ribbon brought the piece together. Unfortunately I discovered cotton is not that warm for Fall. This piece has sat in my closet these last months. I guess all new knitters live and learn! Cotton is for spring garments with spring colors! Well, I’ll just have to rock the “Spice” in March.

Yarn Used: Rowan “Cotton Glace” in colors “Spice” & “Mocha Chocolate”. Yarn used was 4 and 1 ball respectively.

Time Spent Knitting: This garment took about two weeks to complete while not working a day job. I spent a good four hours a day knitting. I think I finished quickly because I was anxious to have my first garment knit up. I was also thrown off a few days because my picot edge frusterations.

New Skills Learned: The mocha picot edge was a challenge. Pattern asks you to bind off sts., then cast on some more. These extra cast on sts. result in a bump or picot at the edge of your work. At first I used a cable cast on. This resulted in a bulkier picot that still curled my stockinette stitch edges. I tested on another area using single twist cast on. This worked much much better and resulted in a smaller more delicate picot. I had to take out some picot edging and catch my live stitches. I think this helped me learn both how to do the edging but also work with live stitches. I very well could have ruined this piece if I didn’t catch them correctly. The picot edge looked much better after some gentle ironing.

Frusterations or changes / clarification made to pattern: I wish the pattern would have told me which single cast on method to use for the picot edge. When doing straps, I also gave up on single cast on as I just could not knit the first row from them neatly. I broke yarn and basically did a double cast on, then picked up knitting from middle section of bust. Another slight change in the pattern was that there was two to many yo holes in the under bust area. It would have been fine if I did not choose to add ribbon. The pattern did not call for ribbon under the bust but I thought it looked much better with it. With ribbon going in and out, the ribbon would have ended up exiting on the outside of the garment. Two yo holes were so close to the seam I just sewed them in when I seamed up the garment.