Yarn: Rowan Linen Drape
Needles: US 4 & 5
Wow. I did it. For once, swatching worked for me and I was able to alter a pattern to suit my yarn. And it fits! It's comfortable, and it actually looks good on. I'm so stunned, I'm not exactly sure what to say about it. After many ill-fitting sweaters and other garments, I've sometimes wondered if I am better off just knitting shawls and scarves and toys and the like. But I think this skirt proves that if you take your time, measure, swatch, and want a wearable FO badly enough, you can make it work. I wasn't sure I had it in me--I wasn't sure if the yarn had it in it either--but here we are. Sweet, sweet victory.
To appreciate how far I have come with this yarn, let's peruse its history of failure, shall we?
I bought this Rowan Linen Drape on deep discount at A Good Yarn in Brookline, MA, right after I moved the yarn-shop's neighborhood in 2005. I was blinded by new-yarn-love and somehow decided it was a good idea to immediately cast on for this cabled tube-top.
Linen and cable? Linen and tube tops? None of these things get along very well. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Riiiiip.
I loved this yarn so much, I did not loose hope and almost immediately after the first failed knit I devised a plan for a deep-v-necked top-down raglan. It would be so flowy and flattering. Like the hour glass sweater from LMKG, but v-necked, and so much better. Right? Right.
I knit the whole body for this plan, tried it on, and... Flowy? Not even close. Flattering? Think again. This thing was suck tight and not even blocking could save it. I was so discouraged, I ripped and the yarn languished in a plastic grocery bag for a couple months.
I don't know why, but I was doggedly determined to make this yarn into something I could wear. Come hell or highwater, I would wear orange linen! So I eventually cast on and knit almost the entire body for this cropped wrap in an old issue of Vogue Knittng:
Bad all around. It was too cropped, and just the wrong yarn for this project. Not even worth discussing. Ripped, bagged, and forced to sit in a yarn basket and think about what it had done.
All of these attempts happened during winter 2005 and spring 2006, so this yarn spent almost 2 years pondering its faults. But right before we move to NYC, I decided to give it one more chance, thinking it might make a good skirt, and rescued it from the stash bins that are now in storage almost 200 miles from our apartment. It helped that I didn't haphazardly approach the project without considering any factors except my desire to wear orange linen. Not every knit can be a quick fix knit. Sometimes you have to give a little to get a lot.
Anyway, back to the skirt. It was generally a breeze to knit, though the finishing was a bit fiddly (edging was sewn on and elastic waistband had to be assembled). I really like the waist band. A lot of other skirt patterns have drawstring waistbands, which is fine, I guess. But I think it looks a lot more polished to have the elastic band.
I'm going to start looking for a slip to wear with this, because in bright light, it's definitely a bit see-through. And then, once I can actually wear it in public, I'll take action shots at a family event or out and about in Brooklyn. Should be interesting to see if people react to it; you don't see a lot of knitted skirts like this around...
* Title is a nod to my bro-in-law, Mike, who is making a go of selling the bar exam study flash cards he and his friends invented while they were in law school: DOMINATE the bar. Don't just do stuff, DOMINATE stuff.
