Where were we again? Oh yeah, Knitting!
Before we were interrupted by prom gowns and puppies, we were making a Permission Denied.
Believe it or not, once all the cutting is done, we're in the home stretch of Finishing. There are only two steps left: Mounting the sleeves, and finishing the fronts/neck edges. You can do either step first. I did my neckline and fronts first, because I hatched a cunning plan to add a collar. There just weren't enough birds on the thing for me:
First, I picked up and knit my way all around the neckline. Easy! Half the stitches are still live, after all. If I had planned a regular neckline, I would have just knit a simple binding from this point. But, being who I am, I was destined for a more fiddly path.
I flipped to the WS, and with a second needle, picked up all the purl bumps of the new stitches I just picked up.
Now I had one needle on either surface of the neckline; RS and WS. I worked a few rows on each needle, until I had enough new knitting to sandwich my cut edges, and meet together.
Then I joined the two facings together on the next row by working together one stitch from each needle (like a 3-needle BO, without the BO). From there, I could easily have knit my collar from the top town, adding increases to allow it to curve around the neckline and lay flat. But that would mean that my motifs would be worked upside down. As in, knitted stitches that look like "A" instead of "V". So "Easy" was not to be. Surprising Nobody.
Instead, I worked my collar separately, from the bottom up, creating first a hemmed edge, working a few decreases to make it curve, then joining for knitting in rounds with a center steek. Then I knitted my motifs (the birds from the chart). After that, I decreased the last round down to the same number of stitches in my neckline. I cut the steek, knit facings to cover it, and then grafted the finished collar to the neckline.
After that, all I had to do was work matching bindings on the center fronts. Done and Done.
Presto! Permission Denied: Now with More Birds!