Meanwhile

I've been planning and working on two dresses.
Dress No 1 is the Burda Ribbon Dress from BurdaStyle Magazine 03 / 2013.

My plan is to make it without the ribbons, to use a bit lighter fabric and lining. I've traced the pattern from the magazine and bought the fabric and the lining. I should really learn about fabrics, I only know that the fabric is poly crepe silk and the lining is poly jersey, I think.
With a bag full of cut and unfinished projects I didn't want to ruin another fine and expensive fabric :)))

I've started my adjustments to the pattern by adding 2 cm to the neckline to make it less open. I'll also have to shorten the above the waist pieces by 2 cm and to shorten the skirt part (well, that's not really worth counting as an adjustment). I'll start with the lining and use it as a muslin for the dress. The pattern does not envision a lining, but I think it would be fairly easy to make and attach one.
However I'm moving really slowly on this project, because I also started

Dress No 2. It was inspired by Elena Kuzmina's latest Missoni style dress. I've bought the same yarn - Alize Diva Batik, but in a different colorway, mine is 3679 in fern green, grey, light yellow,  orange and pink. I only bought three skeins, and I now think I'll need four, so an urgent visit to the yarn shop is in order, while they haven't sold out the yarn from my color batch.
This is where I've got so far - 15 cm from the bottom. I steam blocked a small portion to see how it would look and I like it so far. Because length is important, I plan to knit further 5 cm, then transfer the knitting on a longer cord and steam block it properly and to repeat the process every 20 cm to avoid unwanted sagging and lengthening in the end.

I've planned my dress with knee-length and the pattern I've drafted so far is as follows:
Cast on 288 sts, distributed in 16 repeats of 18 sts each.
The chevron chart is:
m1, k1, m1, k7, k3tog, k7
The decreases will be included in the chart - 6 decreases of 16 sts each, a total of 96 stitches decreased from the bottom to the waist.
The decreases will be in the k3tog part - m1, k1, m1, k7, k4tog, k6, m1, k1, m1, k6, k4tog
Thus every second repeat will be decreased by 2 stitches, alternating the decreased repeats a total of 6 times - when the knitting is 21 cm long, 26 cm, 31 cm, 35 cm, 40 cm and 46 cm. This is what I've planned up to the waist so far, we'll see how it goes and then I'll calculated the increases for the bust and the form of the neckline. I have an idea to make it straight from the armsycles to the shoulders and to regulate the width of the shoulders with some piping and an Icord. If I ever get there :))))