This past weekend I couldn’t dedicate too much time to my knitting due to the Swing Madrid Festival. Seven hours dancing on Saturday plus two on Sunday left us brain dead. I managed though to block Émilien and Freija. Émilien is done, but I have problems to find a zipper with the right grey tone. Monday was bank holiday, so I set to the task of sewing the buttons to Freija. Wow, beautiful and adequate buttons; I don’t get tired of looking at them!
I wanted to make this cardigan for ages, almost since I started knitting. I started last year with a yarn that turned out too thick for it (Malabrigo Worsted Merino) just because I was too lazy to read the pattern twice. I finally got the right yarn just before Christmas and I casted on in the train back from my Vigo to Madrid (6 hour trip) at the beginning of January. I temporarily paused this project to work on Émilien and it seems I finished both almost at the same time.
I used the wonderful yarn Malabrigo Rios. It was the first time using this one and I am sure I will use it again and again. It’s beautiful, warm and incredibly soft. Like other supper-wash it feels a little bit like cotton, but with some elasticity. It has nice drape and it seems more durable than Malabrigo Worsted Merino. At least I don’t think it’s going to pill like that one. We’ll see with time.
I made size 33” and decided to remove the bobbles. They didn’t add any beauty in my opinion and I can see them easily caught in zippers, hooks or anything sharp, ruining the cardigan. I would have maybe narrow a little bit the waist, but I think it’s a problem of mine. My waist is quite thin and most sweaters are a bit loose there. Anyway I think it has a great fit. It grew a little bit after blocking, and the neck fits perfectly now. I was a bit afraid of having narrowed it too much, but at the it has just the right size.
I modified the sleeves, making them much narrower. I did like the original, but it felt to me more like a jacket or a coat and I prefer fitted sleeves for normal cardigans (that I can wear under a coat). This is how I modified them:
- Cast on 40 st.
- After the M1’s they become 48 st.
- Increase 2 st with M1R, k, pm, k, M1L every 12 rows 4 times (rows 14, 26, 38, 50). 56 stitches.
- Remove increases on rows 74-76 (detailed in pattern).
- After row 73 work two sleeves at a time.
- Reverse sleeves (left is right and right is left).
After joining the arms I had 260 stitches instead of 282 (11 less st per arm) and I continued to decrease as it was described in the pattern until I got 124 stitches instead of 146, so the neck is around 20 stitches narrower than the original. I have a thin neck and again, the one on the pattern seemed a bit too wide.
The pattern calls for a three needle bind off for the underarms, but that adds a bit of bulk that I don’t like and doesn’t make sense to me in a seamless cardigan, so I just grafted and I can say that it looks neater to me.
Agh. I’m always worried about things getting caught in zippers. I’m glad I’m not the only one.
Imagine your beautiful work completely ruined. No way. I guess you start knowing about that when you get some experience and your work was spoiled in some way…