New Glasses!

Yesterday I got new glasses. I'm so excited! I'd finally decided that I didn't like the old frames, and a friend pointed out that they were too wide for my face. I decided he was right and made him responsible for helping me find new ones. The old lenses were 48mm across and oval, the new ones are 39mm and almost round. I think it's hard to see too much difference in the pictures, but the new ones look much better to me. You can try and see.

Old and New:

The new glasses also have shades. (The sweater in these photos is a beautiful one, made for me by my mother in Lopi Lite, and perfect for wearling on this snowy day.)

And the knitting...

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions about the hem. I decided to try both smaller needles and the provisional cast-on for three-needle hem "seam", but didn't have smaller needles in the right length, so I decided to stick with the uniform size. It might still leave a touch of flair, but that will be cute in a little girl dress. It also meant that it was easy to tell where I should sew the hem in -- the same number of rows from the hemline. The only problem I had happened because I've never worked with a provisional cast-on before and unraveled and picked up all the stitches at once. Fighting with stitches only 14 rows apart on two circular needles made it hard to manipulate the stitches so that I could do the three-needle technique, so I ended up using yet another needle to hold 10-15 stitches at a time, and this was a great success.

So here it is! I did get a little bit of a line in spots, as Allana warned, but I'm hoping I can pull that out a little during blocking, and I think it's pretty subtle.

Click to flip it over and see the wrong side.

I'm now ready to start the fair isle section and I'm itching to do it. Hopefully I can make some headway on that tonight. I hadn't noticed before Alison's comment that the band does pucker a little. I'm not sure what I want to do about that. I think I may just try to keep it loose as I work. You don't see that as much in the picture from the book with the dress on the hanger, but I'll try to be concious of that.

Oh, and as you can see, I'm not going with the original color scheme, partly because of yarn availability, and partly because I wasn't that excited about the red/pink combo in the original. I have a great blue and some lovely purples to use with the recommended cream and oatmeal background and the pink I have for the hemlines, and I think it will be darling. If I make enough progress tonight, I'll show you tomorrow.

Just two more things. First, my mom asked to see the unfinished lingerie, so here's a little peek. I promise, this is the only time I've ever stuffed! (Click for a bigger version.)

And finally, a somewhat artsy camera "oops" from the glasses this morning, showing what my couch really looks like!