FO: Vianne

Yes, the appearance of the banner above means that my Vianne is done and my second Outfit Along outfit is complete with just 2 days to spare.  And you know what, it looks pretty alright.

After the minor setback I suffered when my first planned outfit just looked wrong wrong wrongitty wrong I was fully prepared for this not to work.  I had done my homework and knew that in theory it should be good, but this project was a bit of a shambles from beginning to end so I was pleasantly surprised not to fall at the final hurdle as it were.

So, not to wallow in self pity, but here's all the things that went wrong:

• The upper back.  Silly little mistakes that would be fiddly to fix led to me ripping back and restarting 8 times.  I have never ever bothered to cast anything on that many times before, I generally hit 4 times and call it doomed.
• Loads more mistakes in the lace, all due to me reading the chart for the wrong side.  Mostly I realised right away but there are 3 little 'personalised touches' to the lace pattern that remain.  I didn't catch the third until I was taking these photos.
• The button band.  I was required to pick up a certain number of stitches around the while band.  Because that would have involved me engaging my brain and working out how many to pick up in each section it went horribly wrong.  I went for the 'wing it, it'll be fine' approach.  Guess what, it wasn't!  First go round I didn't pick up anywhere enough and the band just pulled the whole thing in leaving me with a weird shrug looking thing.  Second go round I'll admit to still eyeballing it, but I'm calling it good enough.

And the good, because there is always a good side:

• It turned out fine.  It took ages, but I have a cardigan I can wear with my dress.
• The colour.  I'm having a weird love affair with yellow at the moment, it's so pretty.
• The yarn itself.  I used DROPS Cotton Merino and it is now right up there with my favourite yarns.  It is lovely and soft and the cotton content meant that I didn't mind knitting with it when it was warm.  The plies are slightly different shades of yellow, making the whole effect extra lovely.
• The sense of achievement I got when I finally finished the flipping thing.  I'm really glad I didn't give up because this cardigan is pretty special really.  The details are lovely and I have seen so many lovely examples popping up throughout the OAL.

Right, I'm off to knit a baby hat or something equally small with no freakin' lace.  Big thanks to Andi and Lauren for hosting the OAL, it's been really fun :)