FO: Kerfuffle Ishnana Cardigan

I'm so excited to show off this sweater! Please excuse the photos - this color is really difficult to photograph - also please excuse my mountain of sandbags behind me in the pictures, lol. Ah, Florida post hurricanes, right? Anyway, let's get on with the fun part: the sweater!

It all started with the yarn. I have a tendency to go down the rabbit hole of Ravelry yarn selling on occasion (if you never have looked, I absolutely recommend it!), and this yarn was a great find when browsing the Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock listings. I loved the color of the yarn and I loved the price - $35 for 3.27 skeins. If you're at all familiar with this yarn, you'll know that's a steal of a deal. I just looked it up on yarn.com and it goes fro $27 per skein. So half price for a color I loved sounded pretty swell. I bought the yarn in January of 2016 and it came from a knitter who had recently discovered she was allergic to wool (let's all have a moment of silence for this poor soul). So her loss was my gain, and I grabbed a sweater's worth of lovely yarn for half price :) Around the same time that I found this yarn, I also discovered the Ishnana pattern by Ysolda Teague. I loved the cables and design, and if I went for a more fitted look than the pattern example I knew I could swing it with this yarn. Done and done! 

The pièce de résistance of this pattern is undoubtedly the back. Just look at that cable pattern! I remember when I began this pattern (it is knitted from the bottom up) I had a hard time adjusting to the cable chart since it's a longer chart then I have worked with before, but I quickly adapted to it and I really missed knitting the cables once they were finished. Oddly enough I knitted a nice chunk while my husband watched Game of Thrones in the background, and this cable design feels very in line with that show to me. Very regal, I guess.

But the party doesn't end with the back! Take a look at the sleeve! This is the fanciest sleeve I've ever knitted, and I just love them. The pattern includes 2 different options for the fronts and the sleeves, both using the same cable pattern on the back. I loved the back so much and I wanted to continue the cable design all over, so I chose the cables in each place. The other design is lovely too, so I may end up making that one day as well.

Even the cables on the front have a little something extra to them. I did not even notice this until I really got into knitting this, but the cables undulate and wave across the front of the sweater! How cool is that? I kept trying to explain this to others while I was knitting, but it was very difficult to show until the button bands were attached. Since I knew I was cutting it close with my yarn, I switched up the construction and knit the body followed by the button and neck bands only then moving on to the sleeves. It turns out I could've been a little more free with my yarn usage, and I do wish this was just a little bit longer, but being a bottom up cardigan it was very difficult to tell if I was going to have enough yarn, so I skimped. This is a very nit picky thing though as I love this sweater. I really do need to get better at accurately anticipating the measurements I need with the length though as this has happened before. This is why I prefer top-down sweaters, lol. Anyway, moving on...

I tried to get a photo that showed the subtle color variation in this yarn, but it looks so much nicer in person. The other reason I love this yarn is the color name: it's called Kerfuffle! How great is that?! This is a hand dyed yarn, so while the overall color is a gray-ish purple, there are little bits that are more charcoal or more purple or lighter purple, etc. I totally LOVE the colors. I feel like this is the perfect amount of color variation. Because of these subtle colors I know I can wear this sweater with a lot of other colors - I can help it look more gray, more purple, more blue, etc.

As this is a very fitted sweater, I knew I needed to back the button bands. I used some silver colored rayon petersham ribbon since it was the best color I had on hand to coordinate. I like the result. I machine stitched the button holes and then sewed the ribbons to the sweater button band by hand. I also lucked out with the buttons. Earlier this year I bought a gladware bin full of buttons for $5 at The Sewing Studio, and these iridescent purple ones were included. I tried several button styles from my stash (even some that were metal with celtic knots to accent the cables), but I liked how these were the right color and somewhat clear so they blend in well and let the knitting be the star.

And as with all my sweaters, this is realistically how it will be seen out in real life. I like this just as much open or closed, which is always nice. I started this sweater in May and finished it on October 1st, so this is the fastest I've ever finished a fingering weight cardigan. Grant you I did set this aside several times, and I even made an entire sweater for the Outfit Along in between working on this, so I could definitely get it done faster if I really worked on it diligently. Much better than my last one though that took me a year, lol. I'm thrilled with my new sweater, and I'm excited to soon have weather cool enough to wear it! I love this pattern and definitely recommend it (and it's a real bargain considering you get so many options) and I love this yarn. Now I love the sweater :) Yay knitting!

Summary:
Yarn: 2.87 skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the Kerfuffle colorway - $35.00
Pattern: Ishnana by Ysolda Teague
Notions: 1" wide Petersham Ribbon in Gray - $3.00, 8 purple-gray buttons - $0.10, purple thread - $0.25
Time: 4.5 months
Total Cost: $ 38.35