The Cardigan.

In August of last year I started knitting a cardigan. I am not the fastest knitter in the world, just going to put that out there but I did hope to have it finished by last winter. I spent ages going through patterns on Ravelry to find one suitable, long enough, fastened and had pockets. I eventually settled on a James C. Brett one, it doesn’t have pockets but I figured they’d be easy enough to add after the fact.

I really liked the tweediness of the one in the pattern pictures and so bought myself some tweedy yarn, King Cole Fashion Aran in the shade Orkney.

Cracked on and it was going great guns, two fronts, a back and a pair of sleeves in not too much time, I mean it wasn’t finished by winter but, for me, it didn’t take that long. Looking at my Rav notes, in February it was time for the bit I was not looking forward to, the picking up of stitches for the border and collar. Yikes. I don’t mind the actual act of picking up and knitting, it’s the spacing, it’s getting the stitches all picked up evenly that is the pain in the bumbum for me. I use a ton of stitch markers to divide up the space and work out how many stitches are needed in between them and that seems to work okay.

Above: A sleeve.

I got that done, (427 stitches), and knitted across them all, then just stopped. I’d got myself slightly bamboozled by how the collar was done but once I got it pictured in my head properly I could see how it worked. But I just didn’t feel like picking it up again.

It languished in my bag, making me feel slightly guilty every time I saw it, my other hibernating projects are put somewhere I can’t see them but this one I left out because I was really going to finish it. Then last week I just decided that I was going to finish it, picked it up, did about a million 1x1 ribbing rows and it’s done. The bind off in 1x1 rib nearly did me in though. Ends are woven in and the button is attached.

Above: Almost finished, there's no button yet, picking the right button takes a minute.

Above: Collar detail.

Above: Back view.

Above: The button is on!

Above: Button close-up. I had to make the buttonhole bigger to accommodate this massive button.

It still doesn't have pockets though.