Every time I start a new job I need to cast on someone else’s pattern so that I have something absorbing to knit in the evenings that doesn’t engage the inventive/creative side of my brain. I’ve noticed I deplete so much of that getting used to a new job, that it helps to have these projects on the go in the first few months. This is my NDI sweater:)

This sweater is looking pretty small on the needles, despite “sort of” getting gauge… but I’m hopeful that it will block right open. The density of cables often cinch in the WIP like this and I’ve been burned before trying to make a larger size based on pre-block dimensions.

I’m currently 4 months into my job (so far so good!) and I’m finished the body of this sweater and several inches of the first sleeve. The only mods so far have been to add a few rows to the bottom for length and to omit 1 set of increases and decreases to reduce the severity of the waist shaping. I also ommitted the slipped stitch at each edge for a selvedge as I find this too gapey and loose when I go to sew up seams.

The pattern description and schematic state that there is a shirtwaist shaping at the bottom edge (as would be achieved with short rows,) but I did not find this anywhere in the instructions.

Otherwise the pattern is pretty good. I like the cable motif a lot.

2020-05-04
This is finally finished after I took a long hiatus to work on many other projects including Christmas knitting. It was the first completed sweater during covid 19 quarantine. Hopefully if nothing else, I will get a few sweaters from this.

I was very concerned while I was knitting this that it was too small. I was counting on a heavy block. Thankfully a heavy block both made it the perfect size, and smoothed out the cables beautifully. I seem to recall making a mental note to allow for heavy blocking on cable sweaters in the past….
I love the look of the bee stitch, but due to the fact that there are slipped stitches every 2nd row, this does make it so that the bee stitch panels are a bit shorter than the cable panels, even after a heavy block. Others have chosen to omit the bee stitch, which makes sense… For me - I still think it was worth doing if only for that lovely unique texture.

I can’t say enough good things about this yarn. It’s warm and light and lofty, and I can wear it in a wide range of temperatures and conditions. I wish I had 10 of these sweaters, and I wish I could buy this yarn in Canada.

Additional mods:
I did none of the sleeve shaping. I attempted it at first and found it narrowed too dramatically too quickly. So I frogged the whole sleeve and redid it with my own calculations. I worked 8 dec rounds, every 8 rounds over the last 7.5” of the sleeve.

I didn’t count the number of stitches picked up for the neck ribbing. I just picked up however I thought I needed to make it smooth. I also worked back neck decreases every few rows, while working this ribbing, in order to keep the neck ribbing from gaping.