This cardigan was really fun to knit. The leaf panels were interesting and the stockinette sections kept this from being a tedious project. It’s knit from the bottom up in one piece to the armholes, which means less seaming. And the button bands are knit separately and sewn to the front of the cardigan, which was a technique I had not used before.

The pattern was very well written. There were stitch counts after every increase and decrease section, which was fabulous. (It’s so annoying when a pattern doesn’t include any stitch counts and you aren’t 100% sure that what you’re doing is correct.) The pattern even includes directions on how to make the cardigan shorter for petite sizes. Love it.

Being the loosest knitter of all time actually worked to my advantage in this instance. I knew this was the perfect yarn for this project and it’s fingering weight instead of DK weight, but I still got gauge.

I made this cardigan 16.5” long instead of 19” because I am short and a little short waisted. I worked the body for 8.5” before separating for the sleeves instead of 10” and I worked the armhole for 8” instead of 8.5”.

To shorten the body I omitted the 5 rows worked even and I continued to increase every 4th row for a total of 69 rows (8” long) then worked even for 0.5” before separating the body for a total of 72 rows.

I dropped the neckline 0.5” so it would be 3” deep (before the rib) instead of 2.5” so it would feel more comfortable around my neck.

I made my sleeves 17” long instead of 17.5” for no other reason than intuition. And they are the perfect length, so I guess my instinct was right. My gauge for the sleeves (but not for any other part of the sweater…that’s the problem with putting a project down and picking it up later) was 7.5 rows/inch instead of 8.5 rows/inch, so I worked as for the 36” sleeve but stopped increasing at 78 stitches instead of 80. So my sleeve is 12” wide after the increase rows instead of 12.5”. I omitted 4 rows of the sleeve cap shaping at the beginning so it would be 5.5” long.

I was going to stabilize the button bands with grosgrain ribbon as I did with my Hetty cardigan. But my button bands were 3/4” wide (instead of 1”) so I had to use 5/8” wide ribbon (instead of 7/8”). I had a hard time sewing buttonholes on such narrow ribbon, so I used felt instead because it doesn’t fray. I interfaced the felt and cut little slits for the buttonholes. It was much easier and works just as well.

I used ten 5/8” buttons from lotsofbuttons.com.

Measurements:

• Bust: 36”
• Waist: 28”
• Length: 16.5”
• Body Length: 8.5”
• Armhole Length: 8”
• Cross Back Width: 13”
• Sleeve Length: 17”
• Upper Arm: 12”
• Lower Arm: 6.5”

Total Cost: $20.88

• Yarn: $14.35
• Buttons: $5.18
• Grosgrain Ribbon:$0.75
• Felt: $0.60