I’m using the Spindrift Pebble as the MC; and for the CCs, a variety of shades of Shetland wool I bought as a cone-end pack from Wilma Malcolmson at her studio in Shetland - colour palette brown/rust/green. The balls have no labels, so I don’t know the individual shades.

Mods: Body: I’ve dozily knitted the bottom rib on the 2.75mm needle (rather than 2.25mm) but it should be OK. I’ve knitted the body about 2.5” longer and used 10 buttons.

Sleeves: I haven’t got any 2.25mm dpns for the sleeve cuffs, so i’m knitting them on 2.5mms. I’ve cast on for the sleeve cuffs the next size up (as they seemed a bit too fitted for me) then increased to 89sts, i.e. back to the S size.

Yoke: I’ve changed my mind colour-wise for the main pattern ‘stripe’ - I was going to use a duck egg blue (which was in the pack I bought from Wilma), but I realised after a while that this main stripe, as per the pattern, comprised 2 colours, one of them the main background colour, which weren’t used anywhere else in the colourwork. In this case, the two colours I initially chose weren’t right, as it’s quite a striking stripe! I’ve felt that the colours for this stripe needed to blend more coherently with the other shades used in the cardi… hence I used a plum and a ginger shade instead.

I also found that my gauge had got a bit loose on the yoke, so ripping back wasn’t quite so painful… I’m now reknitting it on a 3mm needle (rather than 3.25mm).

27.2: the steek is cut, exhale of breath… I have followed tips from Marie’s notes on steeks, and also from Ysolda and Hazel Tindall (both very helpful as well). I had intended a machine sewn steek reinforcement, but my usual battle with the sewing machine (my granddaughter’s mini-John Lewis one ) meant that I ended up hand-stitching it with a back stitch. I read in Hazel T’s advice that reinforcing wasn’t necessary with colourwork using Shetland wool, but I had a long area of one colour, so I thought I would play safe and reinforce.

As I’ve knitted the body of the cardigan longer, I was trying to work out how many stitches to pick up for the front bands: Marie’s pattern only gives a finite number for each size, so I had no idea whether it was every stitch, 3 out of 4, or whatever. A clumsy bit of maths indicated that it was probably about every stitch, so that’s what I did (Hazel T actually suggests picking up every stitch, then decreasing as necessary on the next round): the bands look fine anyway, not bulky at all. I’ve now washed and blocked, prior to sewing on some tape along the steeked edges, just to neaten it up. Buttons (Textile Garden) are on their way. Almost there… I’m not totally sure that I’m sold on steeking, it just seems a lot of faff! phaff?

FO: at the end of the day, I am really and truly super-chuffed with this cardi and my steek-success - it really does look very posh, with its horn buttons and sewn-in tape finishing lots of fiddly hand-sewing but the button bands have picked up beautifully and it all looks almost cough professional! I’ve certainly learned a lot from this process and I reeeeally might even try it again