There Will Be Time is my latest release - now live on Ravelry! It is an extra wide, open cardigan with skinny sleeves. The gorgeous short-row-striped front panels are contrasted with a simple garter stitch back and contrast colour sleeves. The cardigan has a boxy shape with dropped shoulders. Back and front pieces are knitted separately. Next, shoulder and side seams are sewn and stitches are picked up for the sleeves, which are then knitted seamlessly.
Pattern: There Will Be Time
Yarn: Tukuwool Fingering, colorways Rae (260 g) and Kimo (117 g)
Needles: 3,5 mm (US 4)
There was a long journey before I got this far. My first attempt was to work with gray only for the front panels, but you could hardly see the different directions they were worked in. You can see the beginning of the project on my blog post from April 2016. I put the project aside, until I saw something striped and realised it was the solution for this cardigan.
I finally finished the sample about a year ago, but I was busy with other projects and forgot about this one. Then one day I found the sample, and realised I had the pattern ready, so it was time to find test knitters. Luckily, that wasn't a problem, and I soon had a fantastic team of patient knitters who helped me polish the pattern to last detail. Finally, it's time, the pattern is out and you can get it to knit the cardigan for yourself!
"There will be time" is from a poem by T.S. Eliot called The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.”
Now, my reader friends: who recognises the quote - where did I learn about the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?
Prufrock was an old man, and in the poem he's talking about how there always was a later time for making decisions and achieving things. In my case, it didn't take a life time to publish this pattern, but it was a long project. However, thinking that there will be time proved right, and now is the time: the pattern is live!
It's CreaDienstag!
I 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!
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.
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.
Corvid was, for me, one of those designs that you know you want to knit from the first time you see it. Love at first sight. That perfect item missing from your wardrobe. I had to have it. And it only took me a year to knit one!
I'm also wearing my Flying Jib Shawl in the pictures.
It's RUMS day.
Pattern: Corvid by Jared Flood
Yarn: Austermann Irish Tweed, 855 g
Needles: 4 and 4,5 mm (US 6 and 7)
The cardigan is knitted flat in pieces and then sewn together. This is a good choice, as knitting it in one piece would mean that you have a gigantic piece of knitting to work on (well, you still do, once you get to the collar...). Also, such a large item benefits from the added structure given by the seams.
This was a nice project to have by my desk last winter: the endless stockinette stitch was a perfect companion to everything I was reading. Unfortunately, the gorgeous cartridge rib details are not so easy to knit while reading, and that slowed down the process. I can do 1x1 or 2x2 ribbing while reading, even brioche, but the cartridge rib pattern is not monotonous enough to be automated in my brain.
I always love it if there is something new for me in the pattern. This time, it was tubular bind off. It does give a lovely finishing touch to the sleeves. In the pattern pictures, the sleeves are 3/4 length. I'm really happy that mine are full length, but I have to admit that I don't remember if I intentionally knitted them longer, if I knitted them longer by accident, or if it happened in blocking. I haven't measured the cardigan after blocking, but it looks rather long, so the extra length might be due to blocking. Of course, I don't know how much taller their model is, but I'm not short either (I'm almost 180 cm/5'11"). This is also the reason why I couldn't have Business Woman model for me this time - the cardigan is too big for her. (And why do I usually have her in front of the camera and not behind it? Look at the collar on the back side...)
So now I have that perfect long cardigan that was missing from my wardrobe! Unfortunately, I have noticed that it's not so easy to wear: you don't want your cardigan open when it's cold outside and putting a shorter coat on top of it leaves a funny cardigan hem hanging from under the coat. So now I need to get a longer coat...
I'm also wearing my Flying Jib Shawl in the pictures.
It's RUMS day.
You can knit all you want in all colors of the rainbow, but, let's face it, the items that you use most are black cardigans. That's at least what happens with knitted garments in my case. On my quest for the perfect black cardi, I decided to go with a circular lace yoke cardigan by Veera Välimäki. This might be the first design by Veera Välimäki that I've knitted, and it was nice to see how she writes her patterns. Instructions were clear, and the design is pretty straight forward, so all there was to do was to knit it. So why did it take 9 months to do it?!
Pattern: East Coast Girl by Veera Välimäki
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock (322 g)
Needles: 3 and 3,5 mm (US 2 1/2 and 4)
The problem with this project was the yarn. I love Malabrigo Sock, so I thought that it would be an easy choice for this cardigan and bought the yarn. Now, a dark color, such as this BLACK, may bleed, but as it was the only color I was using I didn't want to waste time washing my yarn before knitting. The result: any amount of knitting resulted in my hands turning black, and the dye didn't even come off by washing hands so I would have black nails and fingers for a couple of days after knitting. Normally, I work on my projects while doing all kinds of other stuff: reading, travelling, sitting by the playground, waiting for something, you name it. With this project you couldn't do that, though, because picking it up always meant hand washing.
I don't give up easily, so when my LYS had a Malabrigo sale, I bought another cardigan's worth of Sock. This second lot feels different than the first one. It's much softer, and that makes me think (hope!) that maybe it was a problem with the dye lot and I won't have the same trouble with my next project. We'll see, I haven't tried knitting with the second lot yet.
I will have to make another black cardigan, though, as I like to wear mine open and this design doesn't work for that. The wide circular yoke means that if the cardigan is not buttoned it will fall off my shoulders (or maybe it's my shoulders, I don't know). You can see that in the picture above. Until my next black cardigan, I'll just have to learn to button up.
It's RUMS day.
Ipana (”kiddo”) Cardigan is knitted seamlessly from the top down with circular yoke shaping. Sleeves are worked in the round. The yoke features a bubblewrap stitch decoration in multiple colors. It has the look of stranded color work, but it’s knitted with only one color at a time. Choose your favorite colors, or find use for all those scrap yarns! The cardigan has a slim fit (with about 3 cm/1 ¼“ positive ease) so it’s easy to wear as a middle layer and looks cool on its own. Please measure your child’s chest and arm circumference when choosing size, and choose a larger size if in doubt – or to make sure there’s growing space. The top-down construction makes it easy to try it on and modify both body and sleeve lengths if needed.
Pattern: Ipana Cardigan
Yarn: Tukuwool Fingering in colorways Inku (150 g), Empi (11 g), Joku (9 g), Murai (8 g) and Uupo (2 g)
Needles: 3 and 3,5 mm (US 2½ and 4)
One of the best parts of knitting this cardigan was choosing the colors. And while I was waiting for my test knitters to work on their cardigans, I couldn't help but try a couple of other Tukuwool color combos. As soon as I find a 2-year-old model, I'll share more pics with you!
