Video: Sylphide Cardigan Review

This week we are looking at my latest finished sweater - the Sylphide Cardigan. I go over the struggles I had with the pattern (as well as ways for you to avoid them yourself) plus talk about the yarn and all that fun review type stuff. Click the video below to watch now!

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: 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: Dahlia Cardigan with LoveCrafts

A very long time ago, I was contacted by LoveKnitting.com (now known as LoveCrafts.com) to see about collaborating on a project. I was elated - this is just the thing a knitting blogger hopes to eventual have offered to them. I quickly replied that I would love to work with them on a post and they offered to send me some of their exclusive yarn for a project of my choice. Holy cow was that hard to decide, friends. In the end I decided to take the opportunity to make a fingering weight cotton sweater since that was a big wardrobe gap that could help me get to wear my knitting more in this devil's armpit they call Florida. So they kindly sent me the yarn - MillaMia Naturally Soft Cotton in the Flamingo colorway - and I started work on the beautiful lace panel for the Dahlia Cardigan. Little did I know how drastically my life and knitting time would change within weeks of this whole arrangement being made :/ Over a year has passed with so many great, hard, etc things in that time, but this poor sweater languished in a bag unfinished, plaguing me with guilt of this unwritten blog post.

Fast forward to about late June of this year - my personal life felt like it was falling apart, but I finally found myself with a little time to start working on this sweater again. I originally had the goal of finishing it for the Outfit Along since the theme was old wips, so I diligently started working on this whenever possible, which admittedly still wasn't much. Then the unthinkable happened ... my knitting needle broke the last week of July! Thankfully my Knitter's Pride needles have a lifetime warranty, and since I bought them from yarn.com I had a wonderful no-questions-asked experience with getting a replacement size 5 for my set, but it didn't come until July 30th. So I didn't finish it for the OAL2019, but I finished it on August 4th :) This is the Dahlia Cardigan by Heather Zoppetti and it was published in the Fall 2011 issue of Interweave Knits, so it's definitely an older design as far as the internet goes. I've had this issue for a while and I always loved this design. It's a different style then I usually go for - I've never really jumped into the waterfall cardigan trend - but it looked cute and I had one big draw to the design...

LOOK AT THAT LACE BACK. I mean, really. I just adored this lace panel back and always wanted to make it. The construction of this was definitely the strangest I've ever done. You start in the center of that lace flower on the back panel and knit the whole lace chart square, then you set that aside and create rectangles to fill in the area below and above the panel, which will make a solid back piece when you're done. Next you pick up the stitches on either side of the lace panel as well as the extra rectangles you made for the back and knit the entire front panel to completion, leaving an after thought spot for the armholes. Then you go back and knit the sleeves, block the whole thing, and sew the open areas above and beneath the lace panel to make the back one solid piece. As you can tell from how confusing it sounds just to write that out, it was like pattern tetris. You also can't try on much of anything until you're almost entirely finished, which was interesting. I do love the design, but I have to confess that all that plain stockinette (which was the majority of the project) got pretty boring, so I'm sure that contributed to how long this took to make as I just wasn't motivated to get through any certain section like I am with projects that change frequently. The back is beautiful, though, and I'm glad I finally got it finished up.

The one echo of how pretty the back is would be the lace detail on the sleeve, which I also love. Since this is a cotton sweater, I wanted to make sure I could wear it in warmer weather, so I went with 3/4 length sleeves (I left off a few decrease repeats). It's a simple touch, but I think it really makes the front have just enough interest.

As this is a waterfall style, there are very long drapes on the front that look like ridiculous wings when you hold them out, lol. I'm sure I will wear them just hanging like normal most of the time, but the pattern offers another suggestion that I really like:

You can wrap the front drapes across and pin them in place to get a more streamlined front. I will definitely be doing this with a cute brooch or something when the weather gets cool enough to wear this.

The sweater has a collar that is knitted all at the same time as the front drapes. The collar is finished off with a seed stitch border, and in theory this should work fine, but mine just wants to constantly roll up and now show itself off at all. I was super careful to block the collar with the crease in it and keep the border nice and flat to encourage it to lay this way, but I think a combination of the fingering weight yarn and it being cotton have added to it not wanting to cooperate. Part of me wants to starch the collar, but I'm not sure how that would look if the rest of the sweater is not starched. But it does look nice if I actually unroll everything and force it to lay flat - as long as I don't move - but the area around the neck feels kind of hopeless.

The knitting of this certainly did not go perfectly - one of my most glaring mistakes is right on he collar. I must have twisted a stitch or something, because I wound up with a decent little hole. I just try not to look at it, lol. Also the area where the sleeves start have some larger spaces, and since I knit this over such a long period of time, there are some tension differences. It's all not really a big deal in the grand scheme. I will say I don't love the fit of the sleeve with just the afterthought - it feels too tight for my upper bicep, which not only contributes to the stretching out of that joint area, but also feels like it won't pull up high enough on my arm to make the sweater sit right.

As you can see, the sweater doesn't hug against my body in the most flattering way, and part of this I believe is from the afterthought sleeve. I think I'll just stick to sleeve caps in the future. I feel like if the sleeves would pull up further, the top of the sweater would hug against my arm pit better, which generally gives my body the best look. And I don't really feel like everything I wear needs to make me look as thin as possible, but since I've lost weight lately it's a bit of a bummer to not help my stomach look like it does if that makes sense. A lot of this is just the style of the sweater though.

This was also a very interesting blocking experience. You can really see the odd shape - it's basically a big rectangle with a collar and sleeves. I had to put the sleeves underneath the drapes so that I could ensure the edges stayed straight. You can see here that I pinned the collar folded how it should lay. Also the pins around the lace panel are because it wasn't sewn together yet at this point. So odd, lol.

This sweater took me 8.5 skeins of MillaMia Naturally Soft Cotton yarn (I received 10 skeins, so I still have a full skein left over). As far as the yarn goes, it was a lovely experience to knit with, even being a cotton yarn (which is saying something because I'm not generally the biggest fan of knitting with cotton). The yarn is appropriately named because it is very soft to the touch and gives a smooth feel when knitted up. I haven't been able to wear this out yet, but I can tell just from wearing it at home that this will be a nice transitional sweater as well as good to wear in the cold air conditioning to take the chill off. I can definitely recommend this yarn if you are looking for a nice, sweater worthy cotton yarn. Also I love the color selection - I am addicted to coral pink, but I was very close to picking their bright green (another favorite of mine). The quality of this yarn was lovely and the color stayed fast in a hot wash for blocking. I will certainly look at this yarn if I want to make another cotton project in the future.

So that's my latest finished project over a year in the making! It feels so good to finally have this done as well as to have real blog photos again after so long. Just to keep everyone filled in - I'm getting divorced as well as trying to adopt some 16 month old twin girls I've been taking care of since last April. Lots of craziness this past year. But I'm nearing what feels like the tail end of a very bad time, and after being so overwhelmed with life and not taking good care of myself I've started doing things I've been putting off (cut and permed my hair, lost weight, new glasses, good eye cream, etc) and I haven't felt better in years. Thank you, readers, for sticking around my blog in spite of my total lack of posting. It really means a lot to me to have people actually care about what I'm making and doing. So I may not be able to post as much as I once did, but I certainly will be posting more than the past year :)

Summary:

Yarn: 8.51 skeins of MillaMia Naturally Soft Cotton in the Flamingo colorway - free courtesy of LoveCrafts.com
Pattern: Dahlia Cardigan by Heather Zoppetti
Time: 1 year, 2 months

*I received this yarn free of charge from LoveCrafts.com, but all opinions are 100% my own and not influenced in any way. I genuinely enjoyed this yarn :) 

FO: Recoleta Cardigan

It feels like ages since I last posted a finished sweater! It's actually been since November, so really not that long, but compared to my usual turn out it just feels like a while. After finishing all my obligatory knitting for Christmas and whatnot, I had the itch to make a slightly complex sweater. I had a major case of start-itis at the end of January (which I talked about here) and this sweater was my most tempting project from that bout (none of the other things are finished yet, lol). Anyway I've had this planned for years, so I'm thrilled to finally have it to wear.

This is the Recoleta pattern by Joji Locatelli. I've admired it for a few years now and finally decided to bite the bullet. I've only done a few sweaters with multiple charts to follow, so it felt a bit intimidating at first. In reality this wasn't bad at all. I pulled out my grandma's old cross stitch magnet board for the charts and stacked them one above the other, then carried a piece of paper to cover over what I've already done and show me each line with magnets as I went. I also made sure to make my row with small sticky notes as well in case things moved around in my bag (which they did frequently). With those guides to help me, the charts were no problem to follow. The back lace is certainly the more impressive looking area. I love this lace pattern and I really enjoyed knitting it. In fact I liked it so much that I carried it all the way to the hem instead of changing to ribbing across that section like the pattern calls for. I am very happy with this choice and the lace pattern is nice and stretchy so it's a perfect substitute (and much prettier).

And a closer look at that lovely lace :) I just love the texture overall and that's very difficult to show in a photo - it has a great variation of depth in the lace from the knits and purls. This yarn really helped the stitch pattern pop out. I used Cascade Venezia Worsted, a lovely 70% merino wool 30% silk blend. The yarn has a very nice shine and it is quite warm - that might not be what I was hoping for with living in Florida, but it will be good in winter, lol. The yarn is smooth and soft and it was lovely to knit with. I grabbed 6 skeins of the Van Dyke Brown colorway from Craftsy for a great price back in 2015 specifically for this sweater and I used 5.5 skeins so it all worked out very well.

And here you get a glimpse of the other star of this show - the shawl collar :) The collar is the same thickness down the front and around the back, giving a nice bunch up at the back of the neck. This is actually where you start knitting the sweater! The construction was really neat - you use a provisional cast on, knit a rectangle of the collar in one direction, then take out your cast on and knit the same in the other direction, then you pick up stitches between the two and grow from there into a cardigan. Magic!

I love the nice wide panels of the lace down the front. Again - look at that texture - love it! I went for a more fitted look on this but still long and long sleeved. A lot of the samples show more overlap of the lace panels on the front, and I could make them overlap more with a shawl pin or something, but I wanted to go for the more open front look I've seen so much lately and I'm happy with how it turned out.

My only niggle about the fit is in the shoulders. I've only made 1 other raglan sweater, so I didn't really know any changes I would need to make ahead of time and you really can't tell until the sleeves are on and then it's done. The raglan "seams" are a smidge too tight, so when I put the sweater on I have to put both arms in and then give an extra tug at the shoulder on each side to make it sit right. I see in these photos I still didn't get it sitting in the right place :/ I made a size Large all over except the sleeves themselves. I knitted almost one complete sleeve before trying it on and deciding it was too tight and I wouldn't be happy with the fit. So I ripped that out and added more stitches at the underarm - I believe I did XL instead of L for the stitch count and it all worked great. Now the sleeves are comfy but the raglan is still tight. I think I just needed a touch more length on the raglan seam. Ah, well. It's not that big a deal - just something to think about next time I come across this construction.

Overall I really love this sweater. I love the style, love the lace, love the yarn. If only I could reasonably expect to wear it soon, but I will get to sometime. Interestingly I made this hoping it would take a good chunk of time to complete and I made it in 3 months, so technically it was more time than I usually do given that it's in worsted weight yarn, but still given the more complex multiple charts situation it took a little time. All in all a lovely way to spend my random spare time, wouldn't you say? Now that this is finished I can focus on my other projects started in January before letting myself start another sweater :)

Summary:
Yarn: 5.52 skeins of Cascade Venezia Worsted in Van Dyke Brown - $40.00
Pattern: Recoleta by Joji Locatelli
Time: 3 months

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 :)