Short Row Shoulder Shaping

With lots of time in doctors waiting rooms the past 2 days I've been able to make some real progress on this dress. You do a provisional cast-on along the back shoulder line and then do some short rows working from the center towards the sides to make the line slope downwards ... just like your shoulders do. I did a crocheted provisional cast on and learned an IMPORTANT lesson. Do NOT use a fuzzy yarn to make your chain. I was in a hurry, grabbed the first contrasting colored yarn in a similar weight I could put my hand on - which turned out to be some of that yellow Brown Sheep Lambs Pride that I used to knit the sample hat a few weeks ago. It's a fuzzy yarn with a little mohair spun in and that mohair tangled within the crocheted chain and with the Camelino. The chain should have just zipped out of the dress stitches - just the way it's supposed to zip out of dog food bags. I can never get those chains to work either! Instead I had to pick each dang stitch out one at a time. 

Happily they all did come out and loaded nicely onto the knitting needle so I could knit the two front shoulders in the opposite direction. You have to do this part using 2 balls of yarn on a single circular needle - something I never manage tidily. Like the zipping crocheted chain, it should be a simple process - just turn your knitting around to the left when knitting and then turn it around to the right when purling. Or vice versa. Only .. who remembers? After a few rows I have a royal tangle. So isn't it nice this all happens at the beginning - when one is still full of enthusiasm for a New Project? By the time I'm heartily sick of untangling 2 balls of yarn, I'll be joining the front to the back at the underarm and can return to contented circular knitting.

I will, though, at that point, add some short row bust darts and then cast on the sleeves. I don't want to be knitting skinny tubes on the edges of an enormous great dress that I have to flop around in my lap every couple of stitches, so I had better add these sleeves while it's still a relatively small piece of knitting. This also means that ... when I cast off at the skirt hem I will be done knitting. 

And because I can't resist showing off another gorgeous autumn photo - here is a hickory tree in my back yard. I think that bench is particularly inviting. It sits in a bed of day lilies like some fairy queen's throne. I wonder what I'd see if I snuck out at midnight some mid-summer.

A Happy Hump Day to you all.