Braided Straps and Stripes Dress

Dear Meredith,

Here I am wearing the dress I pulled an almost all-nighter to finish. It was a good outfit to wear to Knit Nation yesterday, as it initiated plenty of conversation and compliments, and who doesn't like those when they've just completed a new project!?

It was also fun to be wearing something that I machine knitted amongst an inner sanctum of hand knitters. Because, let me tell you, after the dress was coo-ingly marvelled at, the standard did-you-make-that-what-is-the-fibre-content-how-long-did-it-take-it-must-have-taken-ages questions were asked. I replied it was a different sort of 'took ages': I used a shhhrrrrrrrt, shhhhhhhrrrrrt (cue side to side arm motion representing the carriage of a knitting machine running across the needle bed). At which point, I received the standard oh-you-cheated-look. So firstly, I pointed out knitting all that fine stockinette by hand would be boring as all hell and I'm not that silly.

I suppose, like how it is always an ex-smoker who will tell you how horribly you will die of lung cancer, how yellow your teeth are and how much you stink, I took it as an opportunity to sing the praises of machine knitting and how different (and complimentary) it is to hand knitting, a mind bending skill, with a lot of gadgets (good selling point) and a somewhat overwhelming range of possibilities of its very own. It helps that I can pull the I-used-to-be-like-you-and-snobby-about-machine-knitting thing and be very frank that learning to use a knitting machine has been the greatest challenge in my 27 years of knitting experience.

And on the tube home, I finished the 4th finger of the left hand glove, on short DPNs, in vintage 4-ply yarn, jogless striping every 3 rows, while watching the tallest most glamorous man I've ever seen sporting a pair of tasselled white leather YSL high tops and superbly plucked eyebrows.

xoxAnna