You Wear It Well Cardigan
12:05 PMI had quite ambitious plans for the Indie Design Gift-A-Long, and they turned out to be too ambitious. This cardigan took more than 5 weeks to knit, so I only finished it after the GAL was over. I'm still super happy with the cardigan - a long, open cardigan is something you can wear with everything!
Pattern: You Wear It Well by Mary Annarella
Size: 41
Yarn: G-Uld 100% Alpaka in colorway Cochenille Indigo, 356 g
Needles: 4 mm (US 6)
I made one modification to the pattern in the beginning: instead of working the neckband in two pieces and sewing them together afterwards, I picked up stitches from the first half to knit the second half. This avoided seaming one tiny seam - but I got some extra seaming to do later on. The pattern has a modified sleeve that begins like a saddle shoulder, continues as raglan and is finished like a set-in sleeve. Better stay awake and follow instructions!
The only problem I had in this project was after knitting the body flat and then working the sleeves in the round. As you can see in the picture below, there was a major difference between my stockinette stitch knitted flat and stockinette stitch knitted in the round. At first, I thought that it would even out in blocking, but then I started to fear that it might not. I decided to rip back and work the sleeves flat. That's two extra seams for a much nicer look - I'd say it was worth it!
I've had the same problem before when I knitted the Dubrovnik Cardigan in linen, so I'm guessing that alpaca and linen might have the same unforgiving quality. Whereas wool will stretch to accommodate the differences in knitting flat and knitting in the round, it seems that linen and alpaca require more from the knitter.
If you notice a side seam in the picture above, it's where I changed between two skeins to even out the differences in colour in the plant dyed yarn. There were big differences in colour between skeins, so I used two skeins throughout the cardigan and tried to vary the width of the stripes. You can still see some stripes, but they look ok to me. The only problem was that the first two were so similar that it looks like I only started striping after dividing for sleeves.
It's RUMS day.
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