{"id":782,"date":"2016-02-01T07:30:35","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T15:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/?p=782"},"modified":"2016-01-29T11:37:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T19:37:23","slug":"more-cardigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/?p=782","title":{"rendered":"More Cardigan"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it’s cold and wet outside sometimes you just want something warm to wrap around yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 Enter the cardigan.\u00c2\u00a0 Versatile and good-looking – what’s not to love?\u00c2\u00a0 My closet is full of lightweight cotton versions that I’ve been pushing into fall and spring.\u00c2\u00a0 The trouble is that they’re not nearly warm enough when the weather turns rainy.\u00c2\u00a0 And the handknit pullovers I made last year are too warm for the transitional months.\u00c2\u00a0 I need some lightweight wool cardigans.\u00c2\u00a0 The drape-front cardigan<\/a> was a good start.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s time to add another cardigan to the collection.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 There I was, just browsing to see what was new, when this pile of lightly variegated yarn caught my eye.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20130511_100212_sm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can’t deny that this yarn is dyed in one of my favorite colors to wear.\u00c2\u00a0 With just a tiny bit of green thrown in for interest.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, you know what happened next.\u00c2\u00a0 I bought a sweater’s quantity of it.<\/p>\n

Then came the joy of searching through my favorite patterns on Ravelry to see which one would be perfect with this yarn.\u00c2\u00a0 I found the right one in a jiffy.\u00c2\u00a0 And then the project languished in my queue while all of the other things got made last year.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 It was finally time to cast on for this sweater!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20151230_122129_clr_sm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

First off, this cardigan is a puzzle of sorts.\u00c2\u00a0 The top is worked in small sections, each one fitting into the others in just the right way.\u00c2\u00a0 First one half of the upper collar and upper back, then the other.\u00c2\u00a0 Then you add on shoulder shaping, then a sleeve cap.\u00c2\u00a0 Finally you work across all of it, front to back to front, and it starts to actually look like the start of a sweater.\u00c2\u00a0 Along the way there are plain stockinette sections and easy lace sections.\u00c2\u00a0 I learned a new way to work short rows and a new way to work a stitch increase.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20160104_131322_clr_sm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And just when I thought this sweater would tax my brain for the next six months, I got to work plain stockinette sleeves.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes folks, plain knitting saved the day.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that anything about this sweater is hard.\u00c2\u00a0 Far from it!\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 I needed some vanilla knitting so that I could cruise along for a while.\u00c2\u00a0 It seems that the designer knew that – there was just the right amount of thinking and interest, then on to quieter stuff.<\/p>\n

Here are my finished sleeves.\u00c2\u00a0 Typically with top-down sweaters, you work the entire body of the sweater first then work the sleeves as the last thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Not this pattern.\u00c2\u00a0 Work the sleeves to the length you desire, then do the same with the sweater body.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20160124_131314_clr_sm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, I can hear you saying, “but the color pattern on those sleeves is not the same…”\u00c2\u00a0 Nope, they’re not the same.\u00c2\u00a0 Do I care?\u00c2\u00a0 Not at all.\u00c2\u00a0 This my friends is the beauty of hand dyed yarn – no two skeins will be exactly the same.\u00c2\u00a0 I knit one sleeve from one skein and the second sleeve from another skein.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, I could have mixed them as I worked so that the color would be more even and the sleeves would match each other.\u00c2\u00a0 But in this case I like it just how it turned out.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the sweater body…\u00c2\u00a0 This part is zooming along too.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s the easy lace pattern again, to give each row a bit of interest at the beginning and end.\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s the plain stockinette back, with periodic increase stitches, to give each row a bit of quiet.\u00c2\u00a0 Perfect for social, TV, and podcast knitting.<\/p>\n

Don’t mind me.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll just be over here zooming along on this sweater for a while.\u00c2\u00a0 Whee!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it’s cold and wet outside sometimes you just want something warm to wrap around yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 Enter the cardigan.\u00c2\u00a0 Versatile and good-looking – what’s not to love?\u00c2\u00a0 My closet is full of lightweight cotton versions that I’ve been pushing into … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9,51,65,13],"class_list":["post-782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knitting","tag-knitting-2","tag-lace","tag-sweater","tag-wool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}