Buttercup and serendipity

Wow! I didn't mean to be away so long. Five days? How did that happen? Well, that's what happens when you get bitten by the buttercup bug. Sounds addictive - and it is! But you will be pleased to know that Buttercup is now officially finished, bar photos of me wearing it in good daylight - if you are very lucky. I may use the dummy instead if they look too awful to post:-) Today the weather is rainy, dull and misty - did I say dull? No light whatsoever to take decent photos of the lovely buttercup. So, we'll have to make do with the slightly bleached photos I took after blocking. But it's the details we want to see!

Okay. First up we have the gorgeous feather and fan neckline which you saw modelled before on my dummy (in a slightly brighter yellow). On the flat, you can see how the eyelet pattern aligns with the edge of the feather and fan stitch. I blocked the crap out of all the lace edgings so I could get nice stitch definition but maybe I went a bit too pointy on the neckline?! Hoping once this is on it will settle into more gentle curves:-) This pattern is noted for being a bit 'low' on the chest so I will probably wear a long sleeved tee underneath anyway.

Nicely blocked feather and fan lace edging at the bottom - if I say so myself:-))) Love, love, love it! I really hope this does keep its shape as I like the ripple edging. Not bad matching with the vertical eyelets either. I didn't manage to complete the whole of the increases that the pattern stated though as I knew once I got to the sixth out of the seven increases I was running out of yarn big time and the full length just wasn't going to be. So I sat down and thought of lots of alternatives:

1 - reducing the rows between the increases - but I thought it could go out too much too quickly and look a bit bell-like:-)

2 - knit as long as I could and then knit a simple edging that would match the pattern of the sleeves. Not a great option but maybe the only realistic one.

3 - Alter the feather and fan repeat. It uses 18 stitches repeat (6x3).

The main problem was that 18 could only be divided evenly after the full seven increases. So I was stuffed, I thought. Then while knitting closer to decision time, it dawned on me to change the 6 to a 5. 5x3=15 stitch repeat. And guess what? I was on 240 stitches which divided by 15, sixteen times. Evenly. What are the chances of that? Serendipity!!

So that's what I did. And I decided to go with the flow and add a few more rows of feather and fan for the bottom edging. I was aiming for 4 repeats but as I was rapidly running out of yarn, I thought three was pretty good and looked nicely balanced. Just as well as this was all the yarn that was left.....

A very, very close thing indeed! I couldn't have planned it better if I tried. Knitted as long as I could have with the yarn I had and just enough to cast off - with all my modifications. I'm thinking that watching far too much miss marple has stirred my brain into gear on this one:-)