Frogged and am starting again - people were not kidding when they said this sized large! I tried on what I had and it was WAY too big. Now am making a bit small, on the logic that a) sizes are overestimated, and b) knitting stretches.

At least I figured this out a week or two in and not when I was finished? Still aggravating, though. Am gonna try for a medium instead of 1X though, and hope that fits.

I'd say I'm 20-25% done now... I'm on the plain-knitting part, which is going swimmingly. I had a little confusion when I had to cast on for the neck and underarms, but only minorly so, and it looks good.

As I said to my mother this morning regarding my process: "It's going so quickly now - I'll be at the confusing part any time now!" (Keep in mind that I have very limited experience with cables, which is what the entire skirt is made of...)

Also, my Gigantic Ball Of Yarn That Will Never Ever End is finally showing signs of shrinking. It's now 1/3-1/4 of the size it was when I bought it, which still means it's the equivalent or 3-4 normal balls of yarn! This after making a sweater (links to Ravelry page) and now a good chunk of the way through Dahlia. I keep saying that the skirt length will be dictated by how long my yarn lasts!

I can't wait to get to a point where I can a) try it on, and b) figure out how the heck the skirt works. :P

I'm finally starting to see some progress on Dahlia - five sets out of eight (top shaping) are done, and I can see the puffed sleeves taking shape! Very exciting!

Less exciting, however, are the banes of my existence known as the Right Lifted Increase. I can do the Left ones just fine, but RLIs just seem to screw up. First I ended up bunching everything up by continuing to pick up the same stitches again and again (and in which case I'm glad the needle I was using broke, causing me to lose a bunch of stitches and ultimately causing me to frog and start again), and this time there's a bunch of very tight stitches along the increases. I'm assuming this is okay considering it's also the dividing line between the back and sleeves, but... blah. Not crazy about it either. So, now I'm doing LLI, slip marker, m1. Much nicer, and less detrimental to my sanity!

Also amusing is watching the rows get longer. I started out with 76 stitches, the called-for amount for a 1X Dahlia (I'm not a small girl. Not a HUGE one, but definitely on the largish side!), and am now somewhere in the neighbourhood of 220. Am hoping I'll have room on my circulars for the full 324 or so! (Ah, the joys of not having EXACTLY what's called for and therefore compromising - my size 8 circs are 24" instead of the much larger ones mentioned in the pattern. Oh well. I'm poor and can't currently justify another $5-$6 for a knitting needle when I have the right size, just with less length.)

Maybe, just maybe, I'll finish this in a semi-reasonable amount of time... then again, I can't guarantee that I won't take on small projects in the meantime! I already took a break Friday night and spent an hour making a case for my digital camera, as it keeps getting dings in it from rattling around in my purse. Just a basic pouch, with a drawstring added afterward when I realized it was a bit loose. Nothing too interesting, but something I'd meant to do for quite some time.

On a different note, I was tempted to do some cross-stitching today... until I looked again at the pattern I've got started. I really want the finished work, but it's much more complicated than what I'm used to. I've done some rather large pieces, but they've not been terribly shaded (my favourites are Winnie-the-Pooh scenes), and this one is. I think I need something simpler!

What are you fellow knitters up to?

(Also, welcome to those of you from LJ that don't really know a lot about knitting. Hopefully you don't hate it here. If you do, I'll probably be having a more fandomy-type journal once I set it up, and you can follow that instead.)

so, Jack finally got finished a few days ago. For some insane reason, I have moved onto Dahlia, which (for me, anyway) is insanely difficult. I want to extend the "skirt" into an actual skirt so I can wear it as a dress, but... well, let's not worry about that yet. I got confused just casting on!

Well, okay, maybe that's a teensy bit of an exaggeration. However, I managed to misread/misunderstand the directions a few times, leaving me very confused!

I think I've got it now, though, and hopefully it'll all work out. *crosses fingers*

And now, onto the picspam... which is probably not so much picspam considering there's only three pics. But whatever...
( pics be here )


Oh, and for those of you on Ravelry? If you want, you can find me there, under the name willowkat (link to my profile).