I’m very excited about this project, but I’m a bit nervous too. I’ve spent so much on the yarn I really want it to be amazing.

I swatched carefully and checked sizing, but now that I’ve cast on for the front, it does look rather big…I might try a needle size down… The yarn I’ve chosen is a bit light for the patten, but the next step up, the 12ply, was too heavy.

Such lovely yarn though - a real pleasure to knit with.

Ok, so I’ve just finished the two front pieces and the back piece today. Although I’m knitting the small, it came up bigger than I expected. I seamed it this afternoon, and ARGGGGGGGHHHHHH! I hate the way the seams look! (9th picture) There is waist shaping in the fronts of the cardigan, but in the back piece the shaping is done between the back cables. This makes the side seam wonky, which isn’t helped by the fairly loose gauge I’m knitting this at. I think I could get away with a smaller needle…yes….I’m ripping it out. I really want it to be as good as it can be, and for that I think the shaping needs to be done next the the cables, and also, that the back and front should mirror each other. I’m going to do some serious swatching tonight…

I just ripped out 2 weeks work….((sob))

OK, so now I’m knitting it in one piece. I did extensive swatching on a variety of needle sized and have decided to use 5.5 this time. It comes up a little smaller than it’s supposed to, but it was a bit big first time round.

On my first attempt at knitting this in one piece, I tried putting all the shaping in the sides, just knitting the 2 central cables together in a straight line. then I changed my mind and decided to do the shaping for the XS (which is my favourite from the back), so I ripped back a couple of inches. I started the waist shaping after 3” but for me that was a couple more cable twists than ella’s (I prefer ella’s but really can’t be bothered ripping out again). PLEEEEASE let it be ok this time….

Incidentally, if you’re thinking of knitting this cardigan, do make sure you read the KAL posts - I didn’t read them all so discovered that the buttonholes were on the wrong side only after finishing the body. This time I’m putting them on the normal side, as that would really have annoyed me.

Because I’m doing the XS shaping but with the number of stitches for the small, I had to redistribute the stitches a bit and ended up with too many at the sides of the cables to become part of the underarm. To counteract this, every time I did an increase between the back cables (which gives you the V shape between the shoulders) I did a corresponding decrease at the sides, so the V shape was happening, but the total stitch count was staying the same. I did that until I had the right number of stitches to put on holders for the underarms…it worked well!
OK, so I’ve finished now - I think…I had some further problems with the sleeve caps - they are about a third too short, so I did the increases every third row rather than every other row. I mis-estimated the sleeve length so they’ve come out a bit too long - probably only the same length as ella’s, but because of the wide collar, there’s a tendency for the shoulders to fall down a bit which makes the sleeves longer. It’s better if I’m wearing something with long sleeves underneath for it to stick to which stops it draping. I might yet chop a couple of inches off the bottom of the sleeves and bind them off - I’m practising on a swatch. I’ve tried a sewn bind off in various forms, a regular bind off in pattern, but none look quite right yet…will keep trying…I like a challenge!

I’m really happy I did it in one piece in the end. It hangs beautifully and all of the increased/decreases are hidden by the sides of the cables.

I was a bit confused when I finished the body as the front is wider than the back, even taking into account the overlap…I was surprised that no one else had mentioned it…anyway I checked the maths and it is supposed to be.

UPDATE:

It’s 3 months since I finished the cardigan and I’ve worn it a lot :) The yarn pills, but they’re easily removed without compromising the underlying fibres (which seems to happen with single ply yarns for example), so it still looks very good. It’s been washed twice - once, soaked in a solution of warm water and Ace stain remover for an hour as a giant teddy bear lobbed half a glass of red wine onto it! It’s stood up surprisingly well against red wine and coal dust for something that you would think of as being very delicate.

So cosy. so soft. I think I could have got away with going down another needle size.

I must get around to sewing a ribbon across the shoulders and back of the neck to keep the shoulders from dropping…