Finally - Rosa is Revealed...

It's been on the needles since the 12th of September, and I finally completed it on the 27th of December.....it's Rosa, hooray! I did make a few other projects at the same time, some of which were presents while others allowed me to have a change from working in 4 ply, which can be hard going at times! It (she?!) was knitted using Rowan Cashsoft in green and Rowan Kidsilk Haze in off-white.

I thought I'd evaluate the project to highlight what I liked and disliked about it, so here goes;

Liked

• Well, I just love the pattern. It has a great vintage look and I think is classic rather than fashionable
  
• The fit - perfect, absolutely spot on for me
• The buttons - I think they look like vintage glass buttons but are in fact plastic and from John Lewis, at a reasonable 25p each. I decided to sew them on with red thread to inject an extra bit of colour
• The soft fuzziness of the Kidsilk Haze against the smoothness of the Cashsoft. I love the contrast of textures.
  
• The fact it was made in pieces made it quite portable for knitting on the train etc HOWEVER this does have a downside of having to sew it up
• It was a good knit for allowing you to watch TV or talk to other people as you could zip through the stocking stitch without much difficulty

Disliked

• The bloody ruffles. Having to cast on 300+ stitches 6 times was a real pain and definitely hindered my progress in completing the knit as I grew to dread it. For the outer ruffles, you had to cast on 384 stitches - I was convinced this was a misprint and cast on 284 but I had forgotten that the outer ruffles extend further up the neckline so had to make mini ruffles and sew them on the end. This looks fine and you can't really tell.
• I messed up one side of the front! Hopefully it's not too noticable, but the ruffles do not exactly mirror each other on each side. You need to knit a reverse stich (ie a knit on the purl side) to make a ridge to indicate where the ruffles are to be sewn. Not sure how I managed it, but I extended two of the ridges too far on one side.
  
• Sewing it up - ugh! You can see I made a bit of a mess of it too but I decided I couldn't make it any better if I re-did it, and that no-one would probably notice anyway!
• I'm a little suspicious of the Cashsoft I chose. I made a beret from the same yarn at the end of the summer, and it's sneakily grown and grown through wear so am just hoping that this top won't stretch out of shape. Time will tell!
  

Lumpy seam! Oh Dear

Overall, I'm very pleased with the knit and am looking forward to wearing it. I think it will be perfect for Spring. Would I knit it again? Possibly, yes. It made me overcome a dread of stocking stitch and I am delighted with the results. Would I knit it for anyone else? No! It's just too much work knitting 4 ply, that would only be appreciated by another knitter.

Now onwards and upwards to my next project. As it's also 4 ply, I'm not putting away those 3mm needles just yet.

K x