Knitting a Dress Post #3

The end is in sight I'm up to the armpits! This is the part that I'm most intimidated by, but I've made it this far, and I'm not turning back...

Next time I post it will be with a complete dress!

Knitting a Dress Post #2

This update has been long overdue – but the pictures are more fun now than they would have been a few months ago!

I tested out the yarn and pattern on my trip through the English countryside. I made some great progress and more importantly built my confidence in my ability to complete this project. Just for some perspective on the awesome setting, check out these pics:

When I got back to the States, I bought the amount of yarn I needed for the project (turns out I did the math wrong or the way I knit uses more yarn that want the pattern indicated – but, I now have enough yarn to finish the project, and magically it is in the same dye lot despite being ordered months apart!) and really got started on this project on my long bus ride down to North Carolina for the 4^th of July.

Not sure you can really see the actual project, but here are some pics I took meaning to post an update months ago:

Fast forward four months and many, many hours of knitting, and I have what is clearly a skirt! Wahoo!

I’m still not making promises on when it will be done, but I am taking it on my Thanksgiving trip, and I anticipate having hours and hours to work on it…then there is always the long flight home for Christmas…

Happy knitting :)

North Carolina

I was planning on going to DC to visit some friends for the 4^th of July. One of my friends I reached out to about staying with her told me she was actually going down to North Carolina to visit her aunt, but that I should come down to DC and join her on the trip to NC. Thinking about my goal to have a meaningful experience in all 50 states, and knowing I haven’t been to North Carolina before, I decided to go for it…

Such a good choice! I was promised a relaxing weekend, and an adventure. Seem like an oxymoron? It wasn’t! (and the promises came from two different people :)

The relaxing part:

-       Private pool in someone’s backyard

-       BBQ at someone else’s house with A/C and HGTV (and knitting…)

-       A walk around gorgeous garden’s at Duke University

The adventure:

-       Watching fireworks in downtown Raleigh on a roof top

o   This included climbing some ladders and only partial firework views

-       More hours than I care to count in a bus/ car

On our way from the parking deck to the building to watch fireworks from, we saw an outfit that rivals what I see regularly in NYC:

And after telling the others in our group about it, someone spotted her in the crowd below about 20 minutes later! Amazing – where’s Waldo anyone?

It turns out that Duke University has an amazing campus. Their gardens are beyond gorgeous

  

And their chapel is beautiful. I liked some of the things that their pamphlet said:

“I want the central building to be a church, because such an edifice would be bound to have a profound influence on the spiritual life of the young men and women who come here.” –James Buchanan Duke

Almost a century after Duke’s dream became reality, the Chapel continues to be the central building whose purpose remains, “keeping the heart of the University listening to the heart of God.”

North Carolina was beautiful, the people were so friendly, and I didn’t really get sunburned there:

But I did get burned on this trip here:

But that’s a story for another day….

Knitting a Dress - Post #1

One of the goals I set was to knit a dress. I have a feeling this one is going to take awhile :)

But, I picked a dress pattern! Check it out:

Mostly I feel excited, but I also feel extremely overwhelmed. When I mentioned this to one of my friends she asked, "Isn't the point of your list to stretch yourself and grow?" I'm not sure that was the point of my list when I first made it, but it seems like a good purpose for the list, so I'm going to run with that.

This goal will certainly stretch me and increase my knitting skill level if I succeed with it.

The next hurdle is selecting yarn. That might not sound like such a big deal, but the yarn they used in the pattern picture is $32 a skein    and I can't imagine making a dress that would cost nearly $300. So, no comes my need to learn more about textures and weights of yarn AND pick out a color I want – bring it on!