I spent every spare moment last night and this morning flicking fretfully between my favorite online yarn sources, trying to come up with a solution to the cabled dress dilemma.
The black silk will not work, not even for a shell. It is utterly inelastic - in fact, if you stretch the fabric, the fiber itself deforms and you can't make it go back to its original shape. The only salvage I can imagine is to knit it along with a really elastic yarn ie. wool and I wouldn't even do that until I wash a test swatch to see if a) it is dye fast and b) it disintegrates. At least it's soft, and has the characteristic warmth of silk, so knit together with a DK wool, it would probably make a very nice sweater.
Here's the dress situation: Our last dress-up event before we move to Whistler (where casual is the only dress code) takes place August 11th. We move the next week. Even the speediest Canadian online yarn shops will take a good week to get the yarn to me, which leaves exactly 2 weeks in which to swatch extensively, finalize a brand new design and knit a complexly patterned knee length dress in a sport to DK weight yarn. During this time, I will also work, raise children, pack/declutter and get the house ready for showing. My DH asserts that "no one else would even contemplate such a thing." Hah - shows how many knit blogs he reads! Nevertheless, I suppose good sense must prevail over pride in this instance.
For the record, I have not given up on the idea of a slinky little sleeveless dress in a drapey yarn with cables for structure and shaping, but perhaps a camisole might be the place to start. The sort of camisole that could be paired with nice jeans for a not-ridiculously-overdressed-but-I-do-so-love-silk sort of thing. And not necessarily before we move. Though I'm not ruling it out, either.
The BBS finished up over the weekend and I love love love it. It is soft and scrummy and fits perfectly and is my favorite, most flattering colour. I really ought to block it, but that would involve taking it off. Fortuitously, the sweltering heat here has abated slightly, and there is just enough of a chill in the morning air to make my Serene Sweater With Coffee fantasy a happy reality. In stark contrast to the black silk debacle, I did not compromise on this project, but forked over a rather large sum of money for a top notch fiber. Could there be a lesson here?
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