Emerging from silence, and new project - baby corn

Yes, it has been a while! The post dated April 5th has been taunting me for over 2 months now, filling me with guilt about abandoning the blog. But I have been busy, travelling, working, not sure what else but somehow all spare time has gone.

Plus there hasn't really been anything to write about - the sweetheart jumper is still hibernating (one day...). 

Baby Corn, knitted top down

However, I have started, rather ambitiously as usual, a summer dress. It is Baby Corn from the Stitch 'n Bitch Superstar Knitting book, which is aimed at, ahem, advanced knitters. I've already made the Tulip Top from there, which I absolutely love and wear all the time, and have been eyeing a bunch of the summer projects for ages. 

In case you are wondering, the dress is named as such because the designer used corn yarn - yes, corn yarn. As much as this intrigues me, the yarn has been discontinued so I will not have the pleasure of experiencing a corn garment just yet.  

I say 'rather ambitiously' because it is obviously already almost the end of June, so I really need to be done within the next month if I want to wear it as a summer dress. At the moment, about 2.5 weeks into it, I guess I am close if I want to switch it to a top, but there's still a long way to go if I stick to a dress. The problem is that I wanted an easy, no-brainer project and actually I am now bored of doing row after row of stockinette. The only saving grace is that it is knitted on the round, so I don't have to deal with evil purling.

Close-up of the rib,
which forms the bust of the dress

 Also, all sort of weird things have been happening during this knit. The pattern called for sport yarn and 4.5mm needles, but I bought DK yarn and my gauge seemed ok with 4mm needles. As I was working on it I decided it looked a bit big so I switched to my 3.75mm needles, which I somehow managed to break (I am never buying the plastic ones again!), at which point I switched back to the 4mm ones. Then I got worried again so I switched to the 3.5mm needles, but then it seemed to be getting very tight, so back to 4mm needles I went. I probably should have unravelled but it actually looks pretty even miraculously!

Similarly, after finishing the bust part of the dress you are supposed to make a load of stitches, going from 160 to 240. But when I counted mine I somehow had managed to only get to 200 stitches, so I proceeded to randomly making another 40 on the next row. Again, I should have unravelled but I decided to stick to my haphazard ways.

Will I finish this before going on holiday on July 18th? Let's see!