Oh that old WIP?

Glad you like it, I just flung that on and off my needles, nothing to it...

Yeah right, as if!!
It took me almost exactly a year.  A year of this mainly lying around.  I got the yarn in a sale (yup, there was a reason why this was cheap) and as soon as I knitted with it, I realised why.  This is called haspel silk and it looks gorgeous: lustreous, smooth, like liquid steel... Lovely!

Unfortunately it's a right b**ch to knit with.  'scuse the language.  As soon as you hit it with the tip of your needle, the yarn puffs up as if it was raffia.  It is extremely splitty and snags as soon as you even look at it.  If you have a rough bit of finger nail anywhere near it, you're bound to pull a puffy little cloud of fibrous plumage that will stick out like mad.  I'll be trying to pull all those to the wrong side with a crochet hook.  Well, you live in hope, don't you.

Love the stitch pattern.  I adapted it a bit from one called 'branch panel' - made the adjacent K2tog and SSK into a double decrease and mirrored each second section.  Unaltered it would have been quite wonky, this gives me something that looks like scales.

Which is why I am calling it Steely Dragon's Teeth Top.  Got a nice ring to it.

I'm very pleased that I managed to make it fit.  Pretty darn good even if I say so myself.  Love, love, love how the side seams came out.  Just take a look:

Isn't that delightful?  Well, I delight in them, I'm not usually so neat, so this is something to celebrate - seeing as we didn't get Rapture while I was sewing these yesterday...

I put a single row of crochet around the neckline as edging.  It looks a bit like I only cast off and then couldn't be bothered to do anything else with it but I wanted a neat (check), slim (check) and stylish (uh... not so much) edge.  Oh well, two out of three ain't all bad.

I even wove in - all - the ends too, and there were doo damn many of them I can tell ya... Maddening they were.

But now it's done, done, done, done!  Might even wear it tomorrow if the weather plays ball.

I wish everyone happy WIP finishing!