Crochet: A Dress for Winter

So this one's been on the gray matter cork board for a while now: crochet sweater dress.

I made one last year, while I was still new at garment-making and design, and didn't have the funds for all the beautiful, gorgeous fibers out there. It turned out fairly well, all things considered, and I'm still pleased with it. But now I have another year of experience, I'm armed with multiple books on the topic (my weapons of choice, as it were), and marginally increased disposable income. Plus, I know what I want out of this garment.

Here's the plan:
- Yarn: Knit Picks Swish DK. DK weight yarn makes the fabric a little lighter, so I get a better drape and I can make a finer mesh out of the stitches. This was an issue with the first try, as I was using a worsted wool with tall stitches and thus, needed to wear all sorts of undergarments to look appropriate. It's also 100% merino wool, something I'm very excited about working with. And it's also "superwash" so I don't have to hand wash the dress all the time, which means I'll be more inclined to wear it. Which is the point, right?

- Color: "Dusk". It's a dark, not-quite-midnight blue. I was shooting for a sapphire color, and this is pretty close to the mark, I'm thinking. As these ideas came together, I'd been on the fence between this blue and a cream color, with which I'm sure I'd be just as happy. But this will be the first time I've approached such a large garment with no pattern. I figured, if I made a mistake anywhere, It'd be a lot easier to hide in a dark blue yarn. White has a tendency to scream "Hey! Look at my skipped stitch over here. Yeah, right there!" and I'm just not confident enough. It gives me something to work towards, though.

- Shape: Above-knee, fitted, cowl neck. I adore cowl neck sweaters; they're just so cozy. The cowl-ness of the cowl will be determined when I start working it up. The only information I have to go on with this is a pattern fragment I found when I started looking for this project early on. I wanted to do a top-down construction with this project, so I can try it on as I go, so it'd fortunate that it doesn't look too complicated to join at the neckline again and work the cowl up that way. There's even some opportunities for subtle texture changes with this. Oh, the opportunities!

- Texture: It's my understanding that the yarn has a decent amount of stitch definition, so I've been taking that into consideration with what stitch/stitches I use. Though I have been thumbing my way through my copy of "The Complete Book of Crochet Stitch Designs," I keep coming back to one of my favorite stitches. I've seen it called the seed stitch most commonly, but it's a mesh of single crochet and double crochet.

sc-dc-sc
dc-sc-dc
sc-dc-sc

I like the idea of having the sides of the dress be a slightly different stitch to give it some visual interest, and that would definitely work with this stitch pattern; I could just switch to all sc at some point in the row on both ends. This would also make the shaping increases and decreases much easier. Looks like I've got a new thing to research.

Nerd Wars on Ravelry starts in October, and I'm planning this project for my "dissertation," basically a huge, multiple-month-long project for major points in the competition. So yarn purchasing will wait until October 1st, if I can keep myself in check that long.

To keep myself from jumping the gun, it looks like I'll be buying my mead-making/beer brewing equipment this month! Honey gets bought in October, on a special trip to Florida, but it would be very good to get the the materials together before then. Like, prepare my guest bathroom to be my fermentation room. My mother would be livid about this. I'll just have to make sure it's clean before the holidays.