This is the longest I have taken to knit anything. I only tend to focus on knitting one thing at a time, but over the last few weeks I’ve taken on some extra responsibility at work which has led to a lack of knitting mojo and time.

It’s very loosely based on the granny smith cardigan, but I didn’t want to do the picot edge so went for deep rib instead. I cast on extra stitches for the rib so I could do it on much smaller needles.

I’ve not done any buttons or a button band as I don’t want to ruin it. I always think the button band is the weakest bit on hand knitting. Even if I added one, this would be a tight fit so would probably gape (even with reinforcing ribbon).

I thought about knitting a vertical ribbed button band separately and sewing it on. I might still do that if I feel the need for buttons. In the meantime, I’ll see how I like it open.

I knit it in one piece and picked up stitches around the armholes and knitted the sleeves from the top down. I liked the lack of seaming around the arms, for fit and flexibility, but much prefer knitting this pattern flat. The delicate nature of the yarn made magic looping not much fun. If I was doing it again I would do the same but once the sleeve cap is formed I would knit the sleeve flat and seam at the end.

I increased the number of stitches to accommodate the nice stretchy ribbing.

I went for a kitchener bind off which was much improved by washing (I swatched about 5 alternatives including a tubular bind off but it was my favourite).

I need to go and knit something straightforward with lots of stocking stitch now….

Some early notes:

I started a swatch for this a couple of days ago - I’m planning on doing ribbing rather than the picot edge (I’ve just done a cardigan with a picot edge, so I fancy something different).

Trouble is, I changed size to swatch the diamond pattern and forgot which size I used for the ribbing. It’s either a 2.25mm or 2.5mm. Don’t know what to do…I’m planning on knitting it in one piece so I don’t want to spend days knitting the waist only to find that it’s too big/small… Yup - picked the wrong one. It was 2.5mm…

er….

I’m using super small needles for the ribbing so that it’s nice and stretchy - I did the kelly cardigan in kidsilk haze last year and the ribbing wasn’t good, but the swatch I’ve done on wee needles looks good and pulls in nicely.

I’ve got me a teeny tiny crochet hook and some matsuno seed beads to make things interesting…

ribbing gauge:
44 stitches per 4” unstretched
35 stitches per 4” slightly stretched

waistband to stretch between 28-32”.

cast on 245 stitches

K1P1 rib for 4.5” reduce by 25% (k2, K2tog)
Knit lace pattern for 5”

For a good stretchy rib I cast on with a much larger needle - 3.25mm

I’ll probably have to decrease some stitches at the end of the ribbing so it doesn’t become massive when I change to the lace pattern!