Catching up on blog content!

I realise I have a bad habit of starting blog posts about certain knitting projects and not following up on them. One such project is the Great Gatsby Dress by Mari Lynn Patrick, which I have been going on about for quite a few posts. I have, in fact, finished it - in December last year, according to my barely-more-updated Ravelry account. Here are some pictures of the finished product:

Front (left) and Back (right) of dress

These images are of the dress prior to blocking the neck edge. The picot edging here has a tendency to curl outwards!

...same with the back

Wet blocking the neck edge

A much better behaved edging!

At the annual Jane Austen Festival in Canberra, on the 14th April, 2012. 

I wore it for the first time ever to the Jane Austen Festival, back in April. It was quite cold there, so a knit dress was perfect - providing you had a coat handy! The pianist, who played live music for us to practice traditional old English dances to, noticed it straight away when she saw it, gave her compliments, and asked if I had made it myself. Ah, my very first knitted dress! Of course I was proud of it.

As you can see from the above photo though, due to the weight of the yarn - Rowan RYC Silk Wool DK (50% wool, 50% silk) - the dress tended to drag downwards as I wore it. Yanking a dress up is never a good look; I wore a tank top underneath so that the dress could sag however which way it wanted. It doesn't look very flattering when it is not sitting right, but what can you do. Still, I love the dress to bits regardless, and the thick knitted fabric feels nice and smooth against the skin. Would I knit it again? Yes! But it will take a bit of fidgeting around with knitting maths if I wanted to try knitting it in a different, lighter yarn, and I'm not extremely good with that. Being knitted flat, it's also a bit annoying to have to sew up the side seams of the dress at the end, but I think the seams are probably necessary to give it more structure. My guess is that it will give in to gravity a lot more easily if it was knit in the round.

The Jane Austen Ball itself was very fun, as was eating my way through Canberra. I have to remind myself to post my pictures and restaurant reviews here!

Meanwhile, I think I should invest in a yarn winder...

My current ball-winding apparatus 

This is the yarn I'm using to knit the Knot-sleeve blouse by Olga Buraya-Kefelian - Blue Sky Alpaca Royal in Seaglass

Regarding the Yuja-cha, I did end up meeting up with my Korean friend to get some tips on how to choose the best bottled yu-ja to make the tea. I share her tips with you here:

According to her mum, one should choose yuja-cha that:

• has a yuja content of > 30%;
• has a sugar content of < 15 g per kg
• is made in Korea (I guess to ensure quality? I'm not sure. But I suppose since it's a traditional Korean tea, best to just stick with produce from that country)
• has a bit of honey - not essential, but is better for you, since you'll probably be using it for colds 

30% Yuja/7% Korean Pear

I went to a few Korean grocers with her in the city, but we couldn't find one that seemed to match her criteria perfectly; most seemed to be saturated with sugar. I did end up buying other bits and pieces, while picking her brain about other Korean foods :) I found, at a later date, a bottled preserved Pear and Yuja blend at one of the Korean grocers I some times visit to stock up on (a lot of) snacks and ice-cream mochi balls, which they call..something else. The lady at the counter, maybe in her 50s, had not tried it before, so it's obviously not in popular use, but she said that pear is good for the skin. I called my friend to get her opinion, and she said that she also had not tried that combination, but that it sounds like it would taste quite nice. I bought it, and this is what the tea looks like once brewed:

You do have to use a strainer, unless you don't mind drinking bits of lemon rind

You can have yuja-cha cold or hot. I like it ice cold, but a lot of Koreans like it hot, which is probably the traditional way of having it. The yuja and pear combo is ok, but I prefer the plain yuja one I had at the restaurant. It does put into perspective, though, how much of a overhead they charge on this drink at restaurants. I think the bottle I bought must have been about AU$12 or so? You only need about 1 tsp per cup (or was it 1tbsp? I forget. Just add according to taste.), so you're going to get a lot of uses out of a single bottle. 

I think I've covered most of the things I've been meaning to. Oh, and here's a picture of my teacup and saucer (with spoon!) ring by Jessica T that I got from We Live Like This. I wore it to high tea just the other week, and thought it nicely matched the setting. Come on, you know you'd take this photo too ;)