The One In Which I Retire The Sweater Dress

If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time you've probably learned a couple things about me. Like the fact that I love chocolate pudding or that I have many embarrassing stories that have to do with my underwear.  Or perhaps you've learned that when I like a project I tend to make it over and over and over again.

Yep, I've done it again.

I made yet another sweater dress (it's okay if you yawn and roll your eyes - I won't take offense).

My inspiration this time was to make a very modern looking dress and I was originally drawn to the idea of having wide alternating black and white stripes.  When I thought about it some more though I was concerned that I would become ridiculously bored knitting with black and white and so I decided to keep the look of wide alternating stripes, but to include some color.

For the design of the dress I once again used the instructions laid out in Knitting From the Top by Barbara Walker.  I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating, this is an amazing book (just ignore the slightly "old school" look to it).

The best part about this dress?  I used almost every last inch of the two skeins of yarn that I bought.  See exhibit A - left over pink yarn.

And exhibit B - left over gray yarn.

I should probably admit that my planning was actually not as awesome as it may seem from the tiny amounts of left over yarn.  When I was about three quarters of the way through the project I knew that I was going to run out of both yarns and so I made the decision to do contrasting hems on the sleeves and bottom of the dress with some yarn that I had left over from another project.  It's not a color that I would have chosen for a contrasting hem if I had all the color choices in the world, but it was there, I didn't have to spend any more money on yarn, and it looks pretty darn decent.

And now I would like to assure you that this will probably be the last sweater dress that I knit for a while.  The weather is finally starting to warm up a bit and it probably won't be sweater-dress-wearing-weather for much longer.

So long, beloved sweater dress.  Hello, cardigans that will be much more appropriate for the warmer weather.

Yarn: Two skeins of Cascade 220
Needles: Size 5 and 7
Pattern: Based off of instructions from Knitting From The Top