Two Cardigans

I finished the lace cardigan and took photos of it and the other cardigan I finished in August. I am very happy with them both and can’t wait to wear them.

The first one I finished is Aureed and I chose this pattern as one of the podcasters from the Yarniacs podcast made it in 2021. Her talking about it frequently and seeing the pattern page made me want to make one and I cast on on January 5^th. I used mademinetosh Tosh Sock and there were already some other projects made with this yarn, so I knew it would work. Funny story about this yarn. I had purchased four skeins on the 2014 Yarn Crawl for a specific pattern as I had calculated that would be enough. Worried that it wouldn’t be, the week after the yarn crawl, I went back to the store and purchased another skein – I ended up using all but 8g of the fourth skein. Also, after buying the yarn I swatched for my original pattern choice, didn’t get gauge and didn’t feel like messing about with gauge and pattern so the yarn just sat in my stash until I decided it needed to be knit up and I chose Aureed. Of course I didn’t get gauge but it was easy just to follow a different size.

The fronts are shaped with short rows and I was a bit worried about this as my short rows aren’t the neatest. I used Shadow Stitch short rows and they came out almost hidden. Blocking of the pick up row and the front band made a big difference to the look of the garment. the first photo is a bit goofy but does show off the fronts.

 

The other cardigan finished was a lace cardigan I started in March 2020. When I purchased a load of yarn in a going-out-of-business sale in 2019, my intention was always to have a project on the needles with sale yarn until it was all used up. This project extended that aim quite a bit. Although now I only have two amount left, one of which has a pattern chosen and swatched.

Anyway, back to this project. In the sale I bought two skins of Findley by Juniper Moon, a laceweight yarn that I knew would be enough for a cardigan. A search of Ravelry came up with a lovely lace cardigan, OregonCoast Cardigan and I purchased the pattern. This is not the best written pattern, for a start it is 19 pages (15 for paper saver pattern) and the pages are not numbered! The instructions about gauge are wishy washy and not for a new lace knitter. Comments on Ravelry said that the chart is confusing as it doesn’t state from which row to start the pattern repeat as it is not row 1. (I decided to use the written instructions.) The front band is finished by working the last stitch of the band with one stitch of the body. You do this all the way around until you reach the other side of the band at center front and then you graft (or weave as she calls it) the two ends of the band together. The problem is that you have a join right at the front which she states in the pattern will be half-stitch off. I marked the center back stitch, worked to that point and then rejoined the yarn to the other end of the band and continued the decreasing/joining so that I ended up with the seam at center back. No worrying about a seam showing.

One change I made which was due to personal style and not the pattern is that I wanted longer sleeves and I worked twice the number of rows before the shaping.

Despite these issues, I made a successful garment and am very happy with the end result. It is just annoying when you pay for a pattern and it has issues. I would not recommend this pattern to anyone who had not made a lace garment before.