Dreyma neckline drama

Dreyma came off the needles the other night, and we had another check-in with DH. The extra stitches in the sleeve helped a bit with the wonky wide neckline, but there was still a lot of undershirt showing at the neck. Horrors! That’s like my bra straps showing. No thank you. I looked through Ravelry project pages, and others had this issue, too.

Because Dreyma is knit from the neck down, I couldn’t just add to the ribbing at the neck. Or could I? I thought about the following options:

• Slip stitch crocheting along the back and shoulder, just under the ribbing. That would be easy, but I didn’t think it would be enough to bring the neckline up as far as it needed to go.
• Picking up stitches at the bottom of the ribbing, and just knitting a taller one that would sit in front of the old one. Doable, but thick and maybe awkward.
• Cutting off the ribbing and working it bottom up. But the very first round after the ribbing had increases in it, and I didn’t want to mess with those. It could have been disastrous.

Nope, nope, nope. But what if I *did* pick up and work in the opposite direction? The stitches would be facing the other way: the knit stitch Vs would but up against upside down Vs. That actually wasn’t too obvious; you’d have to be pretty close to notice the Vs. But there’s a horizontal line at the pickup. Like this.

Definitely noticeable. Could I hide it? I recently saw a neckline on Mary Scott Huff’s blog, where she has a herringbone braid under her neck ribbing on the dress she’s designing. If I picked up stitches, immediately jumped into a herringbone braid, and then continued with ribbing, that would hide the pickup line.

Except…I decided I didn’t want a Latvian braid on this Icelandic-style sweater. Although I do love those braids.

Ultimately, I decided to try 3 rounds of ribbing, followed by 8 rounds of stockinette. The stockinette will roll and show the purl side. The Dreyma pattern actually begins with a choice of either a rolled neckline or a ribbed neckline. I just happen to have both, by accident. The rolled edge comes *almost* down to that pickup line, close enough that you don’t notice the pickup seam. (I could make it taller, but I was worried it would then do all its rolling way above the pickup.

The sweater is soaking in the blocking bath at this very moment. I can tack the rolled edge down to the pickup line, if I need to. Hoping I don’t. It looks much better on DH now. If there’s any residual undershirt peekage, I’ll try adding slip stitch crochet around the shoulders and back neck.

Bonus: This sweater is super cute on ME, too, as an oversized tunic. FO pictures soon!