cocktail dress-7This dress has been done since May 7, when I eagerly cast on the Saco Stripes tank.  It’s called Cocktail(Dress) by La Maison Rililie.  This is the second pattern of hers that I’ve knitted.  I also made her BlueSand Cardigan and both patterns were well-written with nice polished details, like i-cord edgings.  While I didn’t always appreciate knitting the i-cord edging at the end when I wanted the dress to be DONE, I really like the look of them. cocktail dress-9I had to deviate from the pattern at the bottom, when I started to run out of the main color.  There are no contrast stripes in the original pattern, but since I bought my MC at a deep discount when it was discontinued, it was unavailable.  I had plenty of the lighter pink, so I improvised as shown above.  I wasn’t crazy about it at first, but it’s grown on me.  I think sometimes we fret over elements of a pattern while knitting them that become completely irrelevant later when wearing the garment.  cocktail dress-10

My sizing is between the small and medium sizes.  I wanted to hit something around the 34″ bust for a bit of negative ease there, but I wanted to keep some of the positive ease around the waist and hips.  I just compared my measurements to the finished garment schematics and tried to hit something that worked well for my body.  I left off a decrease in the waist, knitted to the high hip increases and worked as specified, then I added an additional hip increase.  I’m happy with the body skimming fit.  I also like the colors together more than I thought I would, and while it definitely screams, “GIRLY,” it is a dress, after all.  cocktail dress-4I put off taking pics till after my chin stitches were out, and then I just decided to do a photo shoot with just me, my camera, my tripod, and a remote.  Matt takes a lot of my pictures, and he does a fabulous job of it.  I can be very finicky about the specificity of an angle in a shot, or a weird face I’m making, so it’s nice when I can take a bunch of time and play around with the camera.  That’s also why this post is photo-heavy.  cocktail dress-2I used Laines du Nord Baby Milk yarn, a merino, milk-fiber, and cashmere blend.  I wish it wasn’t discontinued and was available in more colors.  It’s hella soft.  I used pink, light pink, and dove gray.  All in all, the dress cost only about 48 dollars, so I’m especially pleased for that much yarn.

Back to knitting!

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