Sunday, October 7, 2007

FO: Short-Sleeved Cardigan with Ribbing

Meh.

The back looks quite nice though.

I had a hard time choosing buttons, but in the end I think I did good!

The pattern is from Fitted Knits by Stefanie Japel. It's the first item I've made from the book (though I'm working on another). I'll wear it, but I'm not completely happy with it. It's got weird bagginess under the arms which I think is a design flaw since I've heard that so many other people have had that problem as well. Also, using a smaller needle size for the ribbing only causes one to have to block super aggressively so the ribbing will fit around your waist and arms. (Though knitting this on size 10.5 needles means that I had to go down an extra half size. In retrospect I should have gone down a half size less than required, but how was I to know that then?) I also had to aggressively block the button band as I suck at picking up stitches evenly. I don't like how unstructured the button band looks, but to be fair the picture in the book looks the same way. I love the yarn, though - it is Cascade 128 Tweed in the most lovely shade of green with flecks of red, blue, and yellow.

Another thing which made this project frustrating is that there are a number of errors in this pattern which are not in the errata. For example, the horizontal ribbing on the front is written such that you end up making the ribs on the inside rather than the outside and it's difficult to know this before doing it, as the instructions are written in a confusing way. Also, the math on the sleeve decreases make no sense as written, so I just winged it.

I don't feel too bad about the project though, as it did come out well enough to wear and was very quick to make. I think it was a total of 3 weeks, not including the re-blocking and hunt for buttons, and I was also working on a sock at the same time. Not so bad!

1 comment:

mandy said...

i think it looks really good. i've been working on one and it's almost done, save for the buttons. -grnmtnmama on ravelry