Heavy A-line skirt

I wasn't going to blog about this skirt but I guess I can also show the projects that weren't roaring successes.  It's nice to know what to avoid.

This was one of those yarns that I knew immediatey I didn't want to work with, just as soon as I did.  It is Pima Cotton (Mirasol T'ika) and it's horrible.

It is a heavy, nubbly yarn that still splits (oh thanks) even though it has a crepe like appearance. Fantastic (not).  It makes knitting really tough going.

I also didn't like the colour.  Just look at it: it's a dirty looking light blue, with a grey-ey/browish undertone.  It looks grubby before you even handle it.

So the plan was to dye it, eventually.  I am really pleased to see that (eventually) I even did!  That's one for the books.  I even the royal blue.

The pattern is modelled on my Bell Skirt with star shapes bordering the four panels:

This is a pattern from Knitty.com and I loved knitting this first skirt.

The royal blue skirt is just a bit too heavy to wear comfortably so I think I only made myself wear it once. Or so.

The belt loops were the most tricky to get done.  Not so much the knitting itself but the sewing in of all the blessed ends.  I nearly lost the will to live over that one.

I knitted the belt loops by picking up stitches by putting the knitting needle right through the finished knitted fabric and pulled the yarn through.  I probably used a long tail of the yarn because I needed the working yarn on the right side.  I think I sewed the cast-off ends of the loops to the bottom, my memory doesn't serve me well on this detail.

It was all rather fiddly.

I put an elastic band into the tunnel at the top but the thick cotton yarn makes this look really bulky.  The whole skirt is not wildly attractive when worn, there is just too much material around my middle and the skirt itself is too heavy - it is all rather sack-like.

I might pull this out again in summer and see if wearing this is any better when you don't need to put on lots of clothes because it's nice and hot out.  I must admit I'm not holding my breath.

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What I learned is that when I don't like a yarn and it is horrible to knit with right from the word 'go', then chances are I'm not going to like wearing it either.

At least I tried to make something with this yarn.