Video: Designing My Dream Andi Satterlund Sweater

 

Andi Satterlund is back on the scene and she is walking us through designing our own sweater n her new Patreon. Come and see my plans for this dream sweater by clicking the link below!

Video: Every Sweater I've Made - Episode 1

 

Today's the day! I've been wanting to make a video series showing all the particulars of all the sweaters I've knit FOR AGES, and now I have finally started it. I've been knitting sweaters for 12 years and I have now finished 37 sweaters in that time. Crazy! Since it's so many, I'm breaking this up into a series and I will showcase about 5 sweaters n each episode. In each of these videos, I will talk about the yarn and pattern used, what the making process was like, any changes I had to make, and what I think of them now. It's a lot to go over, but if you want to get the real knitty gritty on lots of different sweater patterns, then this is the series for you :)

Head over to My You Tube Channel or click through the video box below to watch.

Video: New Year, New Cast-Ons!

January always gets me in the mood for new projects, and this year I went a little more wild than usual. Something about the holidays making me feel like I must get certain projects done leads to the following time where there are no rules and I can just do what I want - which this year seems to mean make all the things. Come and see what my new projects will be and let me know which is your favorite!

FO: Belladonna Cardigan

Now that I've posted all my Christmas gifts (and I finally got pictures of this), I can finally post about my last make of 2023 - The Belladonna Cardigan. I had a goal to finish this before the end of the year, and then I got sick on Christmas, which facilitated several days where I only wanted to knit, and I got it done, lol. I don't recommend this method, but it did work well. I  managed to knit a sleeve a day and got her done.

This project started back in October and was formulated around some stash yarn. I was given 3 skeins of this  Dream in Color Classy yarn in the Spring Tickle colorway and I love a challenge for making a sweater out of just 3 skeins of worsted weight yarn. This yarn is just lovely - it's a hand dyed tonal green with flecks of browns throughout and I just love it. I was listening to the audiobook of Frankenstein when I started this, so the color felt very apropos. 

Now enter my usual designer for limited yarn - Andi Satterlund. I grabbed this pattern before she closed up shop for good and I'm so glad I did, but sadly it is no longer available to purchase. The pattern is a cropped, fitted, 50s style cardigan with lace panels. There is a larger lace panel for the front and back and then a smaller one for the sides. I love this style of sweater, so I was keen to make this pattern up at last. Unfortunately, this sweater was a bit more of a mental workout than I was expecting. The lace charts are very easy, but they are SO SIMILAR to each other. Despite my best efforts, I could never remember which row I had just done because everything is so close from one line to the next. I had to actually mark which row I was on in each chart as I went and then erase that and mark the next one or else I had to rip back because I messed up. This happened a lot, which is why this sweater took so long to finish. 

Since I've made a lot of Andi's patterns, I've managed to really hone in the fit for myself. This time I decided to cast on the size Small for the shoulder area and then increase out to Medium at the bust, which really worked a treat for my narrow shoulders. Since this lace is so stretchy, I honestly could have made the shoulders even narrower, but this is definitely very good as it is too. I also extended the torso a bit to reach my natural waist, which is always a gamble when I'm working with limited yarn, but it worked out just fine. The shaping for this design is done in the purl channels on the front and back and it looks like darts, which I think is really neat. 

One drawback with jumping right in on a hand dyed yarn is that there can be variations between the skeins even in the same dye lot. Just under my bust, you can see the the lower skein is a smidge darker. Oddly this isn't as big of a deal as it could have been because of where this line hits - I think it kind of just looks like a shadow. I wish I had thought to alternate skeins when I started the project, but oh well.

The sleeves are always the final part I knit on stash bust projects and this was the length I could get out of the amount of yarn I had, which I think turned out great. I love elbow length sleeves. The sleeve construction is neat too - you actually knit from the inside out so you can get even purls on the outside without worrying about tension. I think the sleeves really show off the tonal aspect of this yarn.

The buttons bands are lined with my usual rayon petersham ribbon in a matching color. I had to restock my stash of ribbon and I grabbed the next several colors I will need to make shipping worth it, so this is thankfully an exact match and looks very nice if I do say so myself. The buttons are some nice mother of pearl style ones from my stash that have just a hint of the yellow flash they sometimes can get, which compliments the yarn wonderfully. I'm really happy with how these look and that I didn't have to go out in search of matching buttons. Yay stash!

Realistically, this is how I will wear this sweater, and I like it this way too. This cropped length and this color don't exactly go with very much of my wardrobe, so I'm tempted to make a dress or more brownish skirts to wear with it. 

So that's my Belladonna cardigan :) Even though the pattern gave me a harder time than I anticipated, I am really happy with the finished product. I think the fit is great and the yarn is even more lovely after blocking - I don't know that I've had any other yarn bloom and soften this much with blocking before, truly. The texture change of this was a wonderful bonus. I'm glad I decided to make this up entirely from stash and I look forward to figuring out more outfits to wear this with in the future.

Summary:

Yarn: 3 skeins of Dream in Color Classy in the Spring Tickle colorway - Free

Pattern: Belladona by Andi Satterlund

Notions: 1 yard petersham ribbon - $6.50, 7 buttons - $3.00

Time: 2.5 months

Total Cost: $ 9.50

FO: Chuck Sweater

This project started due to a very unfortunate oversight - I forgot my knitting bag at work on a Saturday and I had no project to work on the following day. Not only did my knitting bag have my project at the time (the sleeve of the Susan Shaw Cardigan) and the instructions for the other sweater I was working on (the Belladonna Cardigan), it also contained my notions bag which has the jump drives I use to hold my entire knitting pattern collection that isn't printed out yet. So I was at a standstill with all projects I was actively working on and I couldn't even pull up the file and see the pattern info. This meant that I needed a project pronto and it had to be one that I already had printed out. I had printed out the Chuck pattern and earmarked it to use this yarn a week before, but I went with the Belladonna instead. Lucky me! I grabbed the stuff and started working on yet another sweater.

This is only my 2nd ever pullover style sweater I've made. Living in Florida, I don't tend to need that level of warmth all day very often, so I've just stuck to cardigans that I can take on and off as needed. I've always liked the design of the Chuck sweater by Andi Satterlund though, and I was just in the mood and decided to go for it. 

This yarn has been in my stash since May of 2014! Almost 10 years! I ordered it as a contender for the Myrna Cardigan when that pattern was released and Andi was running a knit along. I ordered this color thinking it would be a bright, grass green color. When it arrived, I was immediately disappointed. The green has much more of a yellow tone to it than I was thinking based off the color on my screen. I went with an undyed yarn for my Myrna (which I also ordered with this yarn and also don't like, lol) and this yarn just sat in my stash all this time because not only was I mad at the color - I also only ordered 3 skeins. At the time I was just going by the recommended yarn requirements for the Myrna, which are admittedly low because that sweater is cropped and short sleeved - but this means I didn't really have enough to do a lot of the styles that I would have liked to use this color for. In the end, I went with this pattern because I know Andi's patterns are good for squeaking out a sweater on limited yardage. 

The sweater itself was very quick to make, even with a few hiccups and alterations as well as finishing a fingering weight sweater at the same time. I made the whole yoke area that Saturday and Sunday only to realize that my shoulders were twisted. I knew it felt weird to knit, but I just kept knitting and told myself it's the way it was laying on my needles. Nope! I had to unpick the picked-up stitches at the shoulder, twist them the right way, and then graft them back on. This is completely invisible from the outside and looks great inside too, so I was pleased it was a fairly easy fix. From there I just knit and knit until joining at the underarms and got about 3 inches down the body before I realized another mistake. Andi's patterns always come out very wide on my shoulders, so I decided to try out knitting a smaller yoke size and then increase to my usual Medium at the bust. I started knitting what I thought was a Small at the shoulders, but I forgot to double check how many numbers over from the first I should be knitting for that size. Turns out I was knitting an XS the whole time and the increased to a S. I tried it on at that point just to see if it could be fudged, but the underarm stitches were visibly stretched out and I knew it would bug me. SO I ripped back. Then I noticed a mistake in the cables I had known about and just decided I didn't care and it was just a few rows above where I had pulled back to, so I pulled that out as well. In the end, I went back to above the bust itself and sacrificed about 5 or so inches, lol. Good thing I enjoyed knitting this pattern.

This is a very potato-chip style knit because the cable pattern has you just wanting to knit one more row. I really enjoy knitting cables and I seem to forget that after each project, so I really enjoyed the actual knitting of this - way more than the Belladonna cardigan with multiple lace charts to keep track of. This pattern because pretty mindless pretty quickly and it was just what I needed. When I knitted 2 repeats of the center cable as the pattern is written, I knew it looked very short so I tried it on. I accounted for the extra 16 rows of ribbing at the bottom, but it was still comically too short. I have a long torso both above and below my bust, so I'm used to lengthening Andi's patterns a bit. This was made it more of a design choice though. You have to do an additional 30 rows for that cable design and I still liked the cropped look. I didn't want this to go lower than my natural waist. I knit the 3rd cable repeat and thankfully it worked out fine. I shortened the ribbing at the waist to 12 rows simply because I was at the end of my 2nd ball of yarn and wanted to get the sleeves as long as possible. The length of the body could be just a smidge longer if I'm honest, which made this a bit difficult to style. Now I just need to make a dress that it can go on top of :)

The sleeves were an absolute breeze. I'm not sure if it's just that I haven't knit any of Andi's patterns in a long time or if I really have gotten that much faster at knitting, but I was able to complete each sleeve in just 2 days - I night to make the sleeve cap, the next night to knit the rest. At this point I was working with the remainder of just 1 ball of yarn, so I weighed it and split it into 2 equal sized balls just to make sure they were identical in length. I was fully expecting them to be much shorter than the pattern calls for, but I was able to knit the full sleeve length just shortening the ribbing by 3 rows. Crazy, right? I got this entire sweater EVEN WITH EXTENDING THE WAIST out of just 3 skeins of yarn. I'm still pretty shocked about it. Something about knitting a size smaller for the shoulders must have compensated for the length I needed to extend body length because the pattern says it should take 680 yards for the full size Medium. I used 660 and had just scraps left. Kind of a knitting miracle, that.

All in all, I'm really happy with this project. The fit is great - even the shoulders and the length - so my alterations worked. I finished just a few days before December, so the green color lends itself to that festive vibe even though it can still be worn all year (unlike last year's Christmas sweater which is limited to just that season). This yarn is finally used and I had just exactly enough. Those are all such big wins that it almost doesn't matter if I even get to wear this much, lol, which in reality I may not. Even if I only wear it a few times, this was a very fun project to knit and I just love how it turned out.

Summary:

Yarn: 3 skeins of Cascade 220 in Palm - $18.13

Pattern: Chuck by Andi Satterlund

Time: 1 month

Total Cost: $ 18.13

WIP Wednesday: Back To What I Want

With my Christmas gift knitting finished and on its way to their recipients, I can finally focus back on my favorite makes: things for myself, lol. I've been plugging away at the Belladonna Cardigan this week in hopes of finishing it before the end of the year, which I think is pretty do-able, honestly. I stopped last night with just 1 more ribbing row and the bind off for the body, so next up is the neck and button bands before moving onto the sleeves and then int will be finished. I'm hoping the length turns out good - I'm kind of on the fence about where it stops, but I'm holding out hope for after it's blocked and has sleeves.

I really like the shaping on this sweater - instead of having shaping at the sides as usual, this one places them like front and back darts and they are hidden in the lace pattern. See how the plain sections angle down at the waist? That's the shaping. So cool. I'm very excited to see how this looks when it's all blocked out.

I'm also realizing I have a lack of neutral colored socks. I only ever wear socks in the winter and before now I had always only worn them with tall boots, so the socks were always covered. I just got some ankle boots and realized I need some socks that can be seen without being crazy colors. I have wound up a ball of a beautiful skein I won in a giveaway years ago - Morning Bright Organic Merino/Nylon Sock in the Moonlit colorway. I remember being a bit underwhelmed with it when I first won because it's a very neutral light gray color, but now that I need actual practical socks I'm glad I had it on hand. I want to use it to make a textured sock like the 2 Hunter Hammerson designs I have in the picture. Jury is still out on which design I choose, lol.

But being a person who does not like to have a bunch of WIPs at once, planning those socks made me feel guilty about not working on these socks from literally 1 week shy of a year ago. I started these at a Solar Bears hockey game because I needed a small enough project to get into the arena, but shortly after that I got very into my sweater projects and stopped making these. These are Jaywalker Socks, which I've made before, and this is Premier Fruits yarn in the Dragonfruit colorway. Isn't it so fun? This yarn and pattern combo gives me very "Dragonfruit Goes To College" vibes. Part of why I haven't worked on these is that needle. I got experimental earlier in the year and decided to try knitting socks on a shortie circular needle. Guys... I absolutely hate this needle, lol. I need to pull out my trusty carbon fiber double pointed needles and just blast through this project. I'm trying to decide if I need to make myself finish these before starting the gray pair...

So that's what's going on with me this week. I'm doing all the Christmas things with my kids and working a lot but I always make at least some time for my hobbies to keep me sane. How are things going for your holiday this year? 

WIP Wednesday: Emergency Sweater Cast On

What's a knitter to do when you go to grab your knitting on Saturday night only to realize you left it at work because someone moved your knitting bag away from the rest of your things and you just grabbed from the usual place when you left? And not only does your knitting bag contain your sleeve you were knitting but also the instructions for the green sweater you started last week, your good needles set, and your jump drives that contain literally your entire collection of knitting patterns on them so you can't even open up the file on your green sweater to pick up where you left off? So I've officially cast on a new sweater project, lol. 

As mentioned two weeks ago, I've had the Chuck sweater on my radar, so I happened to have already printed out the pattern when I was trying to decide which project to cast on, meaning I had it ready at my disposal. I decided to use the 3 skeins of Cascade 220 in the pal colorway that I bought in (no joke) 2014. I was so disappointed with this yarn when I bought it because I was expecting more of a bright green color. I was also very cheap and I only bought 3 skeins, which is not exactly enough for a sweater, particularly not a cardigan like I would usually want to make. But for whatever reason I almost can't understand why I disliked this color? It's a lovely green, so the only real explanation is the missed expectations. I also never really expected myself to want to knit the Chuck sweater because I never wear pullovers, but when I realized this yarn might be the perfect amount for this design now that I'm a smaller size and that this winter will likely be much colder than ours have been recently, I decided to accept this perfect match from the knitting universe and just make this project. I couldn't bear to face a full Sunday - with church and rehearsal and a concert - without a knitting project. I managed to make most of the upper back on Saturday night, Then Sunday I made the shoulders and front to just before the underarm when I finally noticed this:

I had twisted the shoulders when I started the front! I knew it was laying funny, but having only ever made one other pullover sweater in my life, I just thought it was how it was supposed to sit at the neck. Nope. 

I didn't want to undo my whole Sunday worth of work, so I decided to experiment with unpicking the shoulders. These were originally seamless, so I was kind of riding blind at what t unpick I think I undid a row of knitting on one shoulder, but when I grafted them back together with duplicate stitch, you really can't tell.

Sunday night, it looked like this :) All was well Monday morning, I joined the body at the underarms and now it looks like this:

So I now have 3 full sweaters in the works, which I try not to do. I like having one thinner yarn sweater and one thicker yarn sweater going at one time so I can switch by my mood, but I do typically have a few other projects going - maybe a shawl or a pair of socks or something - which I don't have right now. I'm trying to mentally be fine with this many sweaters, but it's hard, lol. I like the boost of seeing real progress on a project and then the boost of finishing it. With my knitting time now spit between an 3 projects instead of 2, I will not get that boost as quickly. Ah, well. I'm very much enjoying knitting this new sweater - much more than the Belladonna if I'm honest. I always enjoy watching cables grow.

I am also determined to finish my Susan Shaw cardigan soon. Last week I pulled out the sleeve a few times to figure out the width issue and I think it's looking good now. I have the sweater itself on my dressform waiting for me to finish the sleeves and then it will be done :) Then I already have the next project ready to take its place, lol.

WIP Wednesday: Pumpkin Faces and A Putrid Sweater

My mom has 3 new grandkids this year and she has a tradition that she has made a pumpkin trick or treat bag for all her kids and grandkids, which means she has 3 bags to finish in the next week. This year she wanted to have her fancy embroidery machine make the faces instead of the original appliqué that the 1980s pattern has you do. For the girl face, that was no problem, but she enlisted me to help figure out how to do it on the boy face. The girl face is small and contained in one flat panel of the pumpkin, but this boy face spans 2 panels that curve. This is the worst situation for an embroidery machine because you can't hold the piece flat enough to embroider without huge puckers. After going back and forth and trying different things, I told her why don't we just do it the old fashioned way and satin stitch the edges by hand? She finally gave in and let me do it and here is the result.

This was done by using a zig zag stitch but with the length knocked all the way down to 0.1mm with the width set to what we thought looked good. It takes a bit of focus to make sure that you are guiding the machine along the edges of the appliqué fabric in a smooth way, but overall it's really not too bad. Her machine also had a blanket stitch, so I did that on the eyes as a nod to the original pattern which had you blanket stitch all the yellow pieces by hand.

Now the face is ready for the rest of the bag to be assembled and I'm really happy with how it turned out. Is it as perfect as an embroidery machine would have done? Certainly not, but I think if I didn't tell you I did this by hand that you wouldn't know. This is the same technique I used to make Fox and Otter hats for my daughters 2 years ago for Halloween. Those hats are still worn and loved and they have held up great. So hopefully my mom is happy with my work and she doesn't mind this as part of her legacy to her grandson :)

In knitting news, I've completely shifted into working on my Belladonna sweater. I'm still doing the Susan Shaw cardigan, but the sleeve I was knitting is much too large... ugh... this sweater with being too big, man. SO I just hadn't had the mental stamina to pull out so much for yet again and change it. This one has filled the void very well and I love the Halloweeny vibe of this putrid green yarn. I'm experimenting a bit more with the sizing than I ever have before. I've made a lot of Andi Satterlund's patterns over the years, but I've never been 100% happy with the shoulder width. I notice now that even on her example shots he shoulders are made wider than I prefer, then add to that my chronically narrow shoulders and it just could use improving. So this time around I decided to use stitch counts for the smallest size at the shoulders and then increase more at the bust to get to the size Medium. In theory this should work, so I'm excited to see how it turns out. I just joined the back and front pieces on Saturday night, so I have a ways to go before I can really get an idea of how this alteration looks.

I really like how this is turning out, but holy cow I'm not used to multiple lace charts anymore - especially not ones that use the same few stitches but in different orders each row, making it kind of impossible to memorize. I've had to go back and fix things because I read the wrong row of the lace pattern more times than I would like to admit. I think I've finally got to a point that I can read the knitting at least, so it's been smoother since joining the body. 

I've also done a bit of garment sewing, but those are all finished now so I will have them up as finished objects soon :)

What have you been working on this week?

 

FO: Hortencia Cardigan

One nice perk of having all this Covid-19 craziness has been all the very generous free offers by various designers and artists out there. One of them was that Andi Satterlund (I've knit many of her patterns over the years) generously offered one pattern of your choice for free. I love her vintage aesthetic of her patterns, which is why I've knit so many. This freebie happened at the perfect time because I had suddenly developed a love for the Hortencia pattern, which I really didn't care much for when it was released. Funny how our tastes change, isn't it? I had contemplated grabbing this pattern a few times, but I just have so many patterns that I couldn't justify buying another that I wasn't necessarily going to knit up any time soon, you know? So when Andi put up the freebie code, I knew exactly what I wanted to get with it :) And I was ready for a simple knitting project AND I had yarn on hand to make it with. So this project was just meant to be. I officially started knitting this on March 27th, and even with not devoting a ton of time to knitting I managed to finish it by April 15th.

I checked through my whole stash on Ravelry (holy cow, I love the stash feature - seriously you should look into it), and I came across 5 skeins of Cascade Avalon in the Pirate Black colorway. Avalon is a 50/50 cotton and acrylic blend, so it makes for a sweater that is warm enough for air conditioning but not heavy like wool and too warm for Florida. I bought this yarn for crazy cheap in a Craftsy sale back in 2016 thinking that "black" meant black. My monitor showed it as closer to black black, maybe slightly lighter, and I know I had it flagged for a certain sweater pattern (can't remember what now); but when the yarn arrived it was very much not black. The yarn is a charcoal gray color, which is nice and all, but at the time it was just not what I had expected so I wasn't super happy with it. So this yarn sat for 4 years with no project in mind for it, making it perfect for this sweater :) And it turned out that I had the exact amount I needed - meaning "I had to unravel about half of my gauge swatch to finish this" exact amount. Kismet!

One thing I have noticed about Andi's patterns over the many years of knitting them up is that the shoulders always end up too wide on me. Given that I've lost weight and my other sweaters are all too big, I went down to a size Medium for this project. Even with that, the shoulders are still too wide on me. For this style, I think it looks fine, like a design choice, but I think next time I make up one of Andi's patterns I will have to figure out the alterations to narrow the shoulders. 

The real feature of this design is the shawl collar. The entire sweater is stockinette stitch, then the collar is garter stitch, which normally I'm not a huge fan of but I really like the contrast in texture on this sweater. She has a clever short row construction for the collar and it helps it lay nicely. Having said that, the pattern does recommend tacking the collar down to keep it in the right position, which I didn't do yet, but having worn this a few times and having to adjust the collar a lot I known I will be doing that sometime soon.

Interestingly (for me), I actually had no idea what buttons I would use, lol. This was such a quickly envisioned project that I never even thought about my buttons. Even after I finished the knitting, it was over a week before I started looking through my button stash to pick some buttons. The funny thing is that I went with the first option that I picked up - I didn't even dig further in my stash! That is pretty unheard of for me.

I have an entire vial of these buttons in 2 sizes that I grabbed at The Sewing Studio in one of their Annex sales. They are gray and have a slightly iridescent lined design. They looked good + I was in the mood to finish + I was already taking blog photos of my other makes, so I decided to just sew these buttons one and get the pics and call it done, lol. I'm glad I did because now I can wear this when I'm chilly at work.

So that's my Hortencia cardigan :) I really love the finished sweater. I think it will be great over dresses and high waisted skirts (once I make some that fit me). I like the style and color and cotton yarn. So yay for a quick and satisfying project!

Summary:
Yarn: 5 skeins of Cascade Avalon in Pirate Black - $13.90
Pattern: Hortencia by Andi Satterlund - Free (Thank you, Andi!)
Notions: 2 buttons - $0.10
Time: 3 weeks
Total Cost: $ 14.00

FO: Vivacious Vianne Cardigan

I finished a sweater! And it didn't take me a year! It's a miracle! But seriously, after making my Dahlia Cardigan I needed a fun project that had no real deadlines or anything, and this Vianne fit the bill perfectly.

This is Vianne by Andi Satterlund. I've had this pattern ever since she released it, but I had never got around to making it up. I really love the style and it was always on my radar but I just never quite had the inclination. The coolest feature of the pattern is the lacy back.

The lacy and open back makes this kind of the perfect design for hot Florida. It also means the sweater is super stretchy given all that open space - I could've probably sized down for this one, but it's fine enough like it is. I really enjoyed the knitting on this and it was easy to get the knack of the lace pattern. I will confess - I messed up on the upper back but I didn't notice until I had already almost finished the back. I will never tell where the mistake is, lol.

Speaking of mistakes - I made a little snafoo on the front that set me back a bit. I had joined the fronts to the back under the arms and was about 2 inches down the body when I realized I was working a different row of the lace pattern for the right and left front. The problem with this is that the lace swoops are supposed to mirror each other, and my mistake meant that one side was a full 4 rows longer than the other side, so it would not have matched when buttoned up, which would've made me crazy because I would see it all the time like a big shining beacon of failure, lol. I have no idea why I went so far before I caught this, but I decided to just rip it back out, undo the extra rows on the one side, and ptu it back together again. This set me back a few nights of knitting, but not a huge deal considering I am much happier with the finished sweater.

Here's a close up of the lace on the front - I just love it. Also, let's talk about the real star - the yarn. I bought this yarn from pattern designer Emma Welford in July of 2017 during a destash she posted about. She had 3 skeins that she used part of and unraveled, so I got this for a steal of a deal. The yarn is Fyberspates Vivacious DK in the Sunshine colorway, and I think that is the perfect color name. I love the effects of hand dyed yarn - the subtle flecks of darker and lighter tones throughout the finished piece - but generally I'm too cheap to pony up the dough for this fancy of a yarn. That's why I love second hand so much! I loved working with this yarn and it's just the perfect yellow color. So thank you, Emma, for not wanting to finish the project you bought this yarn for! Anyway, because I only had 756 yards of this yarn, I knew going into this project that it wouldn't be enough to make the sleeves 3/4 length as designed.

I had no idea how far I would actually get to make them, especially considering I added 1 inch to the length for my long torso. So I knit the body, then the neck band, then weighed what was left and divided it into 2 identical balls so I could be sure I made the sleeves the same length. Well, that left me with only 25 grams of yarn for each sleeve and that included unraveling my gauge swatch to make the ribbing. It was a close call, and on my second sleeve I was using any and all of my scraps just to finish the bind off. It was a lot of ends to weave in, but I got there in the end. I actually made one sleeve completely, but it was so comically large on my arm it looked ridiculous so I pulled out until the short rows and added a lot of decreases. This sweater isn't designed to have sleeves this short, so I'm sure there is a more technically "correct" way to have done this, and even now the sleeve is pretty loose, but it's done and I don't care that much, lol.

I already had the perfect color of my beloved rayon petersham ribbon in my stash (I get it from Britex and order several projects worth at a time to justify the shipping cost), and even though it wasn't quite as wide as my band, I made it work. In truth, I may not have needed this reinforcement on this particular sweater since it's not very tight (so I won't look like I'm hulking out of my sweater), but I still like the extra stability it adds to the button holes.

So to make it work I just lined the edge up with the picked up stitches for the band and it worked ok. It was a bit of a head scratch getting the buttonholes in the right place since they were off center, but not too bad, and they are all perfectly placed to help prevent my very rounded buttons from slipping out.

I've been trying to stay all stash lately, so I went with these basic white shank buttons. I have a whole tube of these I got for a few dollars, so I'm sure you will see these again. They are wonderfully smooth for this yarn though, which makes them kind of perfect.

And the more realistic shot of how I usually wear my sweaters. Actually, this one may stay buttoned, but I will probably use it both ways. Also you can see how big the sleeves are in this photo. Ah, well. 

So there you have it - a new finished sweater and in a truly fantastic color :) I look forward to wearing this all fall and winter to add a bright pop of color to my life when needed. I'm not sure I can really say "I'm back" with my knitting, but it has been nice to crank out a cute project in a short period of time again. Yay for knitting!

Summary:
Yarn: 3 skeins of Fyberspates Vivacious DK in the Sunshine colorway - $35.00 (second hand)
Pattern: Vianne by Andi Satterlund - $5.60
Notions: 5 white buttons - $ 0.25, yellow thread - free, yellow rayon petersham ribbon - $3.00
Time: 1.5 months
Total Cost: $43.85

FO: Salal KAL

Well it's time for my annual Andi Satterlund Fall Knit Along make :) I love Andi's sweater patterns, and I've participated in her Fall KAL for the past 4 years (2014, 2015, 2016 and now this sweater) so I knew I had to keep that momentum going. This year's pattern was her Salal cardigan, which I was waiting to be released by itself (originally this design was only available in her magazine, Stranded, but I only wanted this pattern so I held out), so I was thrilled to get started this time :)

I shopped my stash and came out with this nice green wool. The yarn is Cloudborn Wool Worsted Twist from Craftsy that I grabbed during their summer sale for a crazy steal ($3 each skein!) and the colorway is Emerald Heather. I've been trying to use colors I haven't knit up already - I am very prone to pick blues and purples or really any other jewel tones, so I have more sweaters in these than anything else and I like to have a variety. This green is not a color I have already made up, so it fit the bill considering my other main choice was this same yarn in a deep teal (which I have made up similar before). I'm still happy with my choice since this goes with my wardrobe but isn't a duplicate in any way, which is nice. The wool itself was fun to knit with - very springy - and while it is slightly itchy on my arms it's great considering the price I paid for it.

The main feature of this sweater design is the lace V across the front neckline. I think the shape feels vintage but still modern, and considering the rest of the sweater is stockinette I thought this would be an extremely easy make. This was a mistake, lol, not because the pattern is hard but because it's so simple that it requires attention to make sure you get it right, which I apparently didn't give enough. I knitted the upper back, then the right and left front. The first time I knitted the left front, I added too many straight rows at the sides of the neck opening, so I had to pull it all out and start over. Once I finished the left front again, I noticed that the lace pattern wasn't matching up across the front of the sweater - the left side lace point was lower than the right front. Obviously something was wrong, but I could not for the life of me figure out where the mistake was made since technically all the lace was fine. I posted a picture to the KAL board and Andi told me that it looked like I started removing the lace motifs too early on the right front. Not knowing where else to start, I ran with this and pulled out my right front. Only after I was starting to knit it again did I realize that the left front and right front had different lace charts - I had used the same lace chart (the one for the right front) on both sides, which lead to the difference in the lace length. SO I had to pull the left front out again too and reknit both, lol. This stung a bit since at that point I knew that the right front had actually been fine, but what can you do at that point, you know? I just reknit both of them while paying much more attention then I had previously and everything went fine.

Once I finished the lace, the rest of the sweater was smooth sailing. I lengthened the body by several inches because I have a long torso but also because I just wanted it to be just past my waist as I find this looks better with my skirts I typically wear. I also left off a few decrease rows at the waist to fit my measurements better. Super easy changes. Mindless knitting for the win! One thing I will say now that I've worn this out and about - the shoulders are particularly wide on this pattern for me. You can see it in the back and front photos and it gives me almost a dropped shoulder, which feels like the sweater is too big when worn. This may be a problem I've had with other sweaters, but as I'm getting better at diagnosing fit I am noticing it now. If I was to knit this pattern again, I would probably size down to the medium until the arm holes, then large bust and xl waist. It's certainly not a big enough issue for me to not wear this or anything, just something to consider for the future. I need to pay better attention to all the measurements.

Even with all the knitting and pulling out, I managed to finish the knitting within a month. I could've made this much faster, but with Halloween and my 60s dress to sew, I only knit this on the weekends at church, so I'm pretty happy with my time it took to make this all things considered. I had some forest green rayon Petersham ribbon in my stash that worked well for backing the button bands, so I did my usual version of Lauren's tutorial minus the interfacing and it worked great. The button bands feel so nice and sturdy now :)

I then searched my button stash and the only ones I liked at all were these matte cream colored ones with a flower shape step down design in the center. I contemplated if I should go with the contrasting buttons or hold out for ones that would match the yarn better, but in the end I wanted to get this finished and submitted for the KAL deadline so I went with these knowing I could always switch them later if I found something I preferred. These have really grown on my though, and I think the cream is a nice touch considering I will probably wear this with my brown skirt most of the time.

So there you have it: My Salal Cardigan :) Another lovely knitting experience and fun knit along to boot. Now I have another sweater to add to the ranks should it ever get cool enough to wear wool here. We've had a few chilly days and I'm really hoping it will drop to cooler temps soon! Think cool thoughts for me :)

Summary:
Yarn: 4.51 skeins of Cloudborn Wool Worsted Twist in Emerald Heather - $15.00
Pattern: Salal by Andi Satterlund - $5.40
Notions: 7 buttons - $0.25, 40" hunter green rayon Petersham ribbon - $ 3.50, green thread - Free (giveaway)
Time: 1 month
Total Cost: $ 24.15

*And since you hung around to the end of this post, here's your reward - a super hot photo of me, lol. Gotta love the out takes :)