Ten-Day Cardigan in Ten Days

I have mentioned yarn I have received from my friend who is always bring given good quality yarn. She keeps some and gives some away. Sometimes we end up with the same yarn but in colours more suited to our individual taste. Recently she gave me loads of Brown Sheep Bulky. And by loads, I mean more than enough to make a garment so no angst over will I have enough to make anything.

My friend crocheted a cardigan which I really liked and decided to make as well, especially as my Tunisian crochet project was not working out. My friend included a strand of mohair with her project so we are not exactly matching. The pattern was written to be made over ten days and had a YouTube video for each day. I decided to start on a Friday so that I had the first weekend to keep up to date and a weekend at the end if I needed to catch up. I was able to keep up but I’m not sure it is something I would want to do again as it is a lot of crochet. I did two days worth in one day as I knew I was not going to be able crochet much the following day. The good thing about that was that I was able to give my hands a rest for a full day.

Although I said I completed this in ten days, there was the inevitable button angst. I decided to add buttons as it is a bulky garment and I wanted the option of being able to do it up. I made five buttonholes and then was dreading the trip to Jo-Anns to purchase buttons. I was debating asking for input about online button purchasing but in the meantime I went to Michaels to look for something completely different and as I was there I wondered around to look at what they had and came across buttons and purchased a pack of five.

Sewing on the buttons made it an 11-day project.

The cardigan is worked from sleeve to sleeve, with stitches picked up at various points to make fronts, bands, cuffs. If I was going to make this again, I would work from the middle of the back out to the sleeves to make each half the same; I especially didn’t like one of the sleeve seams. I would also make the cuffs longer and tighter.

Having said that, I am really happy with my garment and can see wearing it quite a bit in the winter. 

 

It’s Frog Season

A couple of posts ago I said that I had cast-on-all-the-things but had only finished one. This past week has been the week of the frog. I frogged three of April’s cast ons. Three! 

I had cast on three cardigans and one is nearly finished; I just need some time to sew all the seams.The other two, well...Before 1 April I swatched, including blocking, all three yarns but somehow the other two cardigan were both turning out too big. One of them is an allover lace pattern and I wondered if the size would change as I completed more of the pattern but I did not want to keep knitting and knitting and still have to frog, so I pulled it out and recast on a smaller size at the end of May.

The other cardigan is a bit of a mystery as the gauge of the garment is the same as the swatch but the size was still too big. I’m guessing that I was allowing for more ease than needed. Also as I have a limited amount of yarn I decided to restart with a different pattern. Now I am making a top-down cardigan. This way I can try it on at different times and see how it fits and I can stop knitting when I run out of yarn.

I also frogged the second pair of socks. This was a repeat pattern and my notes on the original project say “a bit fiddly”. That felt like an understatement this time around as I just couldn’t be bothered to work on them. They were frogged and yarn went back into stash. 

 

I still have one more project to frog. I knew I would not have enough yarn to complete the project but I convinced myself that I would just need to add contrasting yarn for the borders. It is pretty obvious that I am not going to have enough yarn to make the sleeves but the project is so pretty that I am not ready to frog yet.

But never fear, I made up for all these non-projects by casting on a load of things in June.