smockie: back and front

Well, I've finished the front and back of the smockie dress (from the second little Sublime handknit book - free pattern here), but as you can see they don't match. This is on purpose and must be changed of course. So here's what happened....

First I knit the back as directed. I checked the length and, as it was pretty long, I decided to reknit the garter stitch section, taking out about an inch to shorten the dress overall and also to bring the waistline up higher for a short little empire bodice look. Cute!

Okay so far.

I proceeded to knit the skirt part of the front. This in itself was no easy task as I first had to find more yarn! I only had two balls of the cashsoft dk in my stash. I had hoped that one ball would make it up to the beginning of the garter stitch, which would allow me to work both back and front skirt sections in this lilac color. My plan was then to get a ball of a second color to work the garter stitch bodice sections. But one ball of cashsoft dk only got me about 3/4 of the way up the skirt. So I used two balls for the back and had none left for the front. Luckily, knitbuddy Lisa recognized the yarn as some she had in her stash and let me have her last two balls. Not exactly the same dyelot, but you can't tell the difference, can you?

Alright, front skirt section knitted following resolution of mini-yarn crisis.

Meanwhile, I've taken the pieces in and out of the knitting bag several times and have started to notice that the garter stitch straps on the back are getting kinda stretchy. They're knit on the same US6 needle that the stockinette is knit on and they've got a LOT of give. I start to think that this is a problem I should fix now before I finish the thing and end up hating it. So I finished the front, knitting the garter stitch section with a US3 (the size called for for the little armhole edging) and what an improvement! It's actually not significantly smaller (the difference in lengths you see in the picture above is mostly due to the back having longer straps), but it holds its shape so much better. Now alls I have to do is just reknit that back bodice section AGAIN.

So if you're knitting this one, I'd definitely recommend doing the garter stitch at the bottom edge and at the top in a smaller needle. (Yeah, I goofed and did the bottom edge in the smaller needle out of habit even though the instructions call for you to use the US6 there. Sometimes habits are a good thing!!) You don't have to go all the way down to a US3 like I did - it was just what I had around - but I think it significantly improves the final look of the dress to have neater, tauter knitting in those sections. And if you're lucky, you'll only have to knit the thing one time!