Yarn surgery, or why knitting things right first time is boring!

Progress is being made on Peggy's dress. We have a back, a front and two sleeves (yes two - look what a trip to London and back on the train can accomplish!)

Well you all know that the chances of my not trying to amend a pattern were not very high and the rot has started to set in!

I've already decided to short row the shoulders and do a 3 needle bind off to give a pretty shoulder line (and less of a seam) but in reading through the pattern it struck me that this dress is a "pull over the head" type with no buttons or placket or anything that might give a bit of room for stretch. As written the collar is knitted from the outside in, cast off and then sewn to the top of the dress.

My cast off can be a little tight and I've found myself that I can't always get a cast off edge over my head so I decided the same tweak could work here and what I needed to do was to keep the centre stitches on the front and the back live, keep the collar edge live and then pick up stitches round the sides and graft the two together. So far so good. Shame I decided this after I'd finished the back.

Nothing ventured nothing gained. Fates were against me in that I was hoping that there would be a nice yarn join at one side of the cast on edge to unravel but no, this is how it looked before surgery.
As a first step I put in a lifeline to hold the stitches on the row below my cast off (that's the grey yarn in the picture). I put it in a few sts either side of the cast off just to be on the safe side, comme ca:
And then I cut (yes cut, I cut my knitting, I am insane!) into one side of a cast off st half way through the row:As you can see it all unravelled rather neatly, the sts are caught on the lifeline and it stops unravelling on the right hand side when it meets a st which has been knit in the row above. Working left takes a little more care not to unravel too far as you have to ease the yarn through rather than just pulling but here we have all the sts live and on the needles!
They have now been safely transferred to a st holder and all I need to do is the collar (and a wee bit of sewing up, oh and the shoes to match, oh and the sheep for Peggy herself) - good job it's a long time until July (don't tell me it isn't, please don't - I have to get old before July and that can't be happening yet!)

In other bebe-related news (I was going to call this post "babies babies babies" but figured it might induce un-natural panic in my mother - or at the very least a desperate search for prozac!).... where was I.

Oh yes. That baby blanket. As I came into work this morning my boss said "that shawl you gave the baby, you didn't make it did you?". I duly claimed ownership and it turns out that the blanket has been out and about with the baby and a lot of people have commented on how nice it is and wondered where the baby acquired it. So yesterday the baby's parents had a look at it and his sensible mother correctly adduced that it was hand-knit and the boss started to wonder - he knows I knit because of the small penguins in our office.

So all is now revealed, baby's parents thought I bought it. I am flattered by their opinion of my knitting and so pleased to hear that the baby likes it and travels with it (personally I think the baby knew I made it - he's an intelligent-looking boy)

Anyway the boss said he was very touched that I made the baby something and he wants to bring the blanket to the office to show people (although the baby itself is the more impressive creation), he then phoned the baby's mother to tell her I made it and she said it was amazing. And me; I am quite pink with pride