The big swatch is done!

More good ssk suggestions have come in and I realized that I'd probably be fiddling with getting the right leaning decrease down for awhile and that I might as well just finish that big swatch so I could see it blocked and see what I thought of the needle size.

So I finished it with a pretty tight bind off at the top - figuring that eventually I'll want it gathered in for the top of the dress and then gave it a light blocking (pic above).

Got up this morning, pulled the pins and took a look.


To put it simply - I like it.




Look at it being all drapey and train-y and stuff!

I'm even thinking the needles could go bigger. I had a random thought the other night as I was falling asleep - maybe I'd start at the bottom with REALLY big needles - maybe 13's - then go down to 10's about mid-way through and then down to 8's at the top. I think it could work. It would be very frothy looking at the bottom, which would be pretty cool.

Whatever random off the cuff decreasing I did throughout seemed to really work. Of course I don't remember any of it, having not bothered to write it down, assuming it would look like crap. So I'm left wondering - is it better when I'm not trying too hard or is it just that even if the decreases aren't the best, the crappiness isn't as obvious on the laceweight yarn as it is when I do the swatches in the sportweight?

Here's the final decrease - where I decreased one repeat from the left and the right. I added some lovely arrows to point to the place in the middle where the pattern was eliminated altogether. Just threw that together last night while watching TV and drinking a beer. I mean, is is perfect? Probably not. Is it something that would look fine amidst a sea of lace? Yeah. Totally.

And the right leaning decreases which have given me such stress in the little swatches? They look fine.

So we shall see. I'm still going to try and come up with a nice, consistent chart for those decreases, but I'm not going to keep stressing over how pretty it looks. In the end, I think it will be just fine.

So my debate right now is train or no train? I really would like a very short train - no more than a foot or two. I feel reasonably confident about my ability to create a bustle, but I realized that I'd need to attach the knitted lace to the underskirt at the bustle points for it to work effectively. Not sure if I want to do this. I had thought that the underskirt would be part of the train as well... maybe the train could just be the lace? Especially if it ends up super frothy, that might be okay? I don't know... thoughts?