When it’s cold and wet outside sometimes you just want something warm to wrap around yourself. Enter the cardigan. Versatile and good-looking – what’s not to love? My closet is full of lightweight cotton versions that I’ve been pushing into fall and spring. The trouble is that they’re not nearly warm enough when the weather turns rainy. And the handknit pullovers I made last year are too warm for the transitional months. I need some lightweight wool cardigans. The drape-front cardigan was a good start. It’s time to add another cardigan to the collection.
Sometime in the last couple of years I must have had just this particular need in the back of my brain when I was wandering through the selection in my local yarn shop. There I was, just browsing to see what was new, when this pile of lightly variegated yarn caught my eye.
You can’t deny that this yarn is dyed in one of my favorite colors to wear. With just a tiny bit of green thrown in for interest. Well, you know what happened next. I bought a sweater’s quantity of it.
Then came the joy of searching through my favorite patterns on Ravelry to see which one would be perfect with this yarn. I found the right one in a jiffy. And then the project languished in my queue while all of the other things got made last year. When I began to pack for the holiday travels, I revisited the queue to find something to last me the entire two weeks of the trip. It was finally time to cast on for this sweater!
First off, this cardigan is a puzzle of sorts. The top is worked in small sections, each one fitting into the others in just the right way. First one half of the upper collar and upper back, then the other. Then you add on shoulder shaping, then a sleeve cap. Finally you work across all of it, front to back to front, and it starts to actually look like the start of a sweater. Along the way there are plain stockinette sections and easy lace sections. I learned a new way to work short rows and a new way to work a stitch increase.
And just when I thought this sweater would tax my brain for the next six months, I got to work plain stockinette sleeves. Yes folks, plain knitting saved the day. Not that anything about this sweater is hard. Far from it! It’s just that I would get into a groove of working a particular section, and then it would be time to change to a new section. I needed some vanilla knitting so that I could cruise along for a while. It seems that the designer knew that – there was just the right amount of thinking and interest, then on to quieter stuff.
Here are my finished sleeves. Typically with top-down sweaters, you work the entire body of the sweater first then work the sleeves as the last thing. Not this pattern. Work the sleeves to the length you desire, then do the same with the sweater body.
Now, I can hear you saying, “but the color pattern on those sleeves is not the same…” Nope, they’re not the same. Do I care? Not at all. This my friends is the beauty of hand dyed yarn – no two skeins will be exactly the same. I knit one sleeve from one skein and the second sleeve from another skein. Yes, I could have mixed them as I worked so that the color would be more even and the sleeves would match each other. But in this case I like it just how it turned out. I’m expecting to see that brighter color again at or near the bottom of the sweater body, which will help to make that sleeve not stand out so much.
Speaking of the sweater body… This part is zooming along too. There’s the easy lace pattern again, to give each row a bit of interest at the beginning and end. And there’s the plain stockinette back, with periodic increase stitches, to give each row a bit of quiet. Perfect for social, TV, and podcast knitting.
Don’t mind me. I’ll just be over here zooming along on this sweater for a while. Whee!
