I am so excited to show off my finished Mohn Cardigan ;) Before I get fully into it though, I have a crazy announcement - I created a YouTube video about this pattern review!
I feel like our attention have turned to video instead of blogs ever since the feed readers shut down years ago, and since I enjoy watching content like this on YouTube myself, I decided to jump right in and start making videos. I plan on doing regular posting there and I will always link the video here as well. My channel is also called ShowandTellMeg and I will post content basically just like I blog aboutm so please subscribe if you are interested :)
Ok so the Mohn Cardigan! This is the first design released by Engineering Knits who is a vintage making YouTube creator I love to watch. She purchased this physical sweater as a vintage piece and it was so popular on her channel that she tried to find the original vintage pattern for people to make one of their own only to come up empty handed. So she looked over her finished item and created a pattern to replicate it, then she graded that out into a modern size range and released it for all of us to enjoy and I think it is just the coolest thing.
I did have to make some changes to my sweater - first off, I knit the body 2 dot repeats longer than written. I have a long torso - this is a standard alteration for me. I also like a more fitted waist look than this was designed to give, so I knit a 38 inch size when I have a 40 inch bust. I figure the bust area can stretch a bit and it will help the waist be closer to my actual waist measurement. I also had to make extra decreases at the sleeve head to avoid poofyness, which was not entirely successful. Looking at the example photos from testers and whatnot, this doesn't seem to be an issue for other people, so I chalk this up entirely to some unknown mistake I made when knitting that first sleeve. The second sleeve did not have the same extra section of stitches but it still had a bit too much ease and gives a bit of a poof. I'm still not really sure what I did to have that happen, but oh well. It's still cute :)
I don't know why all my back photos turned out so blurry, but here it is. I used Knit Picks Upcycle Alpaca Blend Sport yarn for this because they had a crazy sale the week of Black Friday and had this yarn for $2 per skein. I bought a bunch of different colors so I was able to lay out different combos and see what I liked. I settled on Sapphire for the base with Black Pearl and Arctic for the dots and I really like how this turned out. I've actually never knitted with alpaca before because everyone always says it's so warm and this is Florida, but this is a blend of wool, alpaca, and acrylic so I thought I would give it a try and it's really not too bad heat wise since this is a sport weight.
I worked very hard to make sure that all my dot rows lined up across the sleeve area. I feel that this is one of those extra details that you don't really pay attention to when it's done well but that would look super off if you didn't line it up. I had to keep counting the bobbles on the example photos and counting back to make sure I started with the right colored dot on the sleeves since these were knit bottom up, and it was a bit stressful but it worked out fine so it was worth it. I also love the jaunty little collar! My hair covers it most of the time, but I think it's a fun little detail.
I did stabilize the button bands with petersham ribbon as per usual. Some of the other versions I've see showed that this button band is very stretchy so the buttons seem to be pulling if the sweater is more fitted. Petersham ribbon solves that problem and I think it just cleaned everything up so nicely.
Realistically this is how I will wear the sweater in real life and I like how it looks unbuttoned as well. I wore it to church the morning after I sewed the button bands and it was comfy and cute - a little warm but then everyone turns on the heat right now so I'm withholding judgement until I get to wear it in a normally air conditioned place.
So that's my Mohn Cardigan :) I love how it turned out and it was so fun to knit! I still can't believe I finished a sport weight sweater in just a month and it's entirely because I always wanted to just get through the next color row. If you like the look of this sweater, I hope you give this pattern a try, and if you want to learn more of the details please check out my video review and let me know what you think over there!
Friends, I have finished the Mohn Cardigan! I managed to finish this in less than a month, which is still pretty shocking to me. I got it completely knit and seamed Sunday night and it is currently blocking. Now I just have to make my ribbon button bands and she is totally done. I finished the knitting on Saturday night, which left me with only a sock project to knit and I just didn't feel like it - so I cast on a toy!
Between Sunday and last night, I knit up this adorable bee project. Every time I look at this pattern, I smile, so I just bit the bullet and knit it up. Now I smile when I see it in person too, lol. This project definitely served its purpose of cheering me up in a hard time. I'll post all the details about it soon, but I definitely love this one :)
After my deliberations in the last post about all the projects I want to cast on, I have finally decided to go with my original plan for my Rose Street Cardigan. It's really a toss up between the two yarns I was contemplating (Knit Picks Stroll in Duchess Heather or Knit Picks Felici in Dragonfruit). I tried looking through my collection of sweaters that still fit me to see where I had a gap, but that didn't help. In the end I really go for more cool toned clothes, so I decided to go with the purple for that reason. The Dragonfruit color would go as well, but I just need to start this project, lol. Purple it is! I still need to knit a new swatch last night and get the calculations going, so this will be my main sweater project now.
With finishing my bee, I also grabbed my Jaywalker socks I cast on in December of 2022. I'm just mentally determined to get these done so they can stop plaguing me. I'm honestly not sure what it is about this project that has me never reaching for it. Is it that I've knit this pattern before? But I've knit the same vanilla sock pattern several times and that has never been a problem before. Is it that I'm not thrilled by the yarn? I just really can't say. Either way, I want this project to be done, so I think this is going to be my main focus for a short while. That's the thing with socks - when you actually hunker down and focus on getting them done, they really do go fast. I'm also knitting this with a heel flap and gusset as the pattern is written - last time I changed for an after-thought heel to avoid disrupting the striping pattern. Since then I've discovered that I really prefer the feel of a heel flap and gusset when wearing the socks, so this time I'm just letting the chips fall where they may on the striping. I'm thinking it will work out fine in this sock because the speckled sections are so wide.
My New England dress is still hanging out on my dress form thinking about what it's done. I need to finish that one too so I can move on with my life, lol. But knitting is going very well!
How are things with you this first month of the new year? Getting anything made up?
Things have been moving right along with my Mohn Cardigan - I just finished the first sleeve :) I did have to fudge the sleeve head a little bit to get it to line up in my size, but it looks like it should still fit me fine. I'm still loving the tuck stitch and I will honestly be a bit bummed when this project is over, lol. I finished the buttons bands and collar this week as well just because that's my preferred order of construction (even though I'm not playing yarn chicken this time). I'm excited to see how this looks when it's blocked, but I love the little collar - I think it really pulls the whole thing together.
Interestingly, Facebook gave me this notification this past Saturday. Apparently it has been 10 years since I made my first ever hand knit sweater. Now I'm almost finished with my 33rd. Crazy.
In sewing news, things have not gone as swimmingly. I got the bodice sewn to the skirt and pinned it on to check the fit before inserting the side zip ... only to discover that the 2.5 inches that I added to the length on this needs to be taken out. I'm seriously so confused with the length of things. It seems that it's the fit aspect I just cannot get right - I'm always either too long or too short. I'm thinking it is because of the shape of my front torso making it hard to define where my "waist" is when fitting, yet when I actually put a fitted garment on, it's obvious where that point is. Ugh. I'm in a pickle because I really want to sew things, yet I won't allow myself to start another project until I finish this one, but I just don't feel like sewing this one. Conundrum. I'm hoping I can muster up the will to undo the waist and shorten it soon so I can move on with my life.
Well I finished the body of my Mohn cardigan and I'm still absolutely loving it :) I haven't seamed the shoulders yet, so it is just pinned to the mannequin because I wanted to see how it was looking and I am super pleased. I think I'll get the fitted look I was going for, which is great. Now I'm working on the button bands and collar before moving onto the sleeves. Over the years I have just preferred to have the sleeves be the final part of a sweater making experience, so that's what I'm going to do.
I love how the texture is looking. People say that it flattens out a bit when you wear it, so I'm curious to see how it looks finished and blocked. We will see. It's still going so fast - seriously this is sport weight and I started it just over 2 weeks ago. Crazy.
Some sewing has actually occurred! It feels a bit like a miracle. This is my Decades of Style New England dress that I cut out back in November. I have worked on it here and there, but not very much in all honesty. To be real with you - my sewing room is an absolute disaster. Normally I can just push things around or move them to a corner pile, etc, but I have so much new stuff from Christmas and whatnot that there is no moving this mess around. I really need to have a drag it all out, get rid of, organize, and put it back session in a big big way, but I just haven't had the time or space elsewhere in my house to do that. So I kind of have to force myself to sew. I always enjoy it once I get going, but the mess is a big imposition. I'm hoping to finish this sometime later this week because I am doing long sleeves and I want to get to wear it while it's still cool outside as much as possible. I realize you can't see much because it's all black, but trust me - it's cute.
And in other news, we have a swallowtail caterpillar! I bought some herbs at a garden center and I always look for caterpillars on the dill plants. We found one and he is growing nicely. I just love watching him crawl around and contort to eat, lol. He is now big enough that I had to put him in a netting enclosure so he doesn't fall on the floor or something. This is not our first experience with hatching butterflies this way, and I am easily just as excited to watch him as my kids, lol.
After finishing my Belladonna cardigan, I had to get another sweater on the needles. I really want to make up the Rose Street Cardigan - I've been waiting to make it since it was released in April - and that will be the next project I start, but this one unexpectedly jumped the gun. I really love watching Engineering Knits on YouTube. Her interests align with mine so entirely - I just love everything she puts up. She wears a lot of vintage handknit sweaters that she purchases on Etsy and Ebay when she films and there is one particular sweater she wears that people used to ask her what pattern she used all the time thinking she had made it from a vintage pattern only for her to explain that she bought it completed already. The popularity of this sweater lead to a whole saga of her making a pattern from her vintage sweater and then grading it out and releasing it as her first sweater pattern - the Mohn Cardigan. To be honest, making this was not really on the radar at first. The design was cute, but I wasn't head over heels or anything about making it. Then add in the Black Friday Knit Picks sale. They did different sales every few days over the course of a few weeks and one of the days they had specific skeins of yarn, including all of their Upcycle Alpaca Blend, marked down to $2. I grabbed the max of 5 skeins in several colors and just 2 skeins in a few other colors in mostly sport weight but also some worsted. I had ideas of what I could make at the time, but no definite plans. Then this sweater was released in December and I put this yarn together with this design in my head and it just wouldn't go away.
Once I finished the Belladonna, I just wanted to swatch the Mohn cardigan to see if this yarn would even work for the sweater because if this didn't work then I would have to drop the idea for a while because I didn't have any other sport weight yarn on hand that I liked for this. I made the first swatch on December 30th, but I had a very hard time getting the bobble effect of the tucked stitches. The first swatch was all over the place. I watched Charade and made the swatch and knew it wasn't done right. Then I remembered that she made a video to go along with the pattern and I thought to watch that. I made a swatch that turned out great and I got gauge no problem, which was very nice to discover. I cast the sweater on officially December 31st and I managed to get the first bobble stripe done, but I still didn't do it right even then. I finally realized what the issue was after that and I've had no problems since, but that first line does not bobble. I didn't want to rip back, so it just is what it is. I may play around with fixing the issue later, but it's fine for now.
Anyway, that is a very long winded description of this next project, lol. I'm using Upcycle Alpaca Blend Sport from Knit Picks and it's working up really nicely. I never planned to make this right now. I never planned for this to be my exclusive knitting project. This pattern is just so fun to make. It's very potato-chip-y. I always just want to get through the next bobble stripe and then the next. Even with not knitting for about 4 days straight, I've still managed to knit to where the pattern tells you to split for the arm holes (I'm extending the length, so I still have some inches to go, but still the pattern says I'm done with the main body at this point). This may also be part of using sport weight yarn, which I've never knit with before on a sweater. I'm used to either worsted or fingering weight sweaters (frankly just because sport weight tends to not be on sale much), so it's been a pleasant experience knitting this up in many ways. I'm using the Sapphire color as my base with Arctic and Black Pearl for the stripes. I like the neutral kind of vibe it gives even though it's blue, and I also love that it's a type of colorwork even though it's just basic stripes. It's like colorwork light, lol, a nice start to my goal of knitting true colorwork this year.
So that's what I've been working on the past few weeks and I really love how it's turning out so far. The tuck stitch bobbles look so cute! I actually like them a lot more in person than I did in the pattern photos. SO fun.
What new projects do you have going this year? I'd love to know!
