Stranger Cardigan

I must have cast on this cardigan in April and completed it in August, which for me is pretty fast knitting for a garment. I've only recently taken a few photos of the finished item. This is the Stranger cardigan by michiyo and is published in Brooklyn Tweed Wool People Vol 4. The recommended yarn is worsted weight. I had in mind to use some of the Shetland yarn from our sheep which is DK weight, it's slightly lighter than the worsted. I test knitted a swatch using the recommended needle size 5mm which produced a more open texture but within gauge and acceptable.

I learnt a new technique while knitting this project, commonly known as a Three Needle Bind Off. This technique is used to join the two cable front panels at the centre back. It sounds complicated but in practice it's very straight forward.

The reason I chose this pattern was the cable detail around the stole like collar along with the simple construction. The cardigan is made up of five rectangular panels and is worked with no shaping. However, I did adapt the pattern to add shaping to the sleeves from the elbow to the cuff. Overall a very enjoyable project to knit.

Couronne Cardigan

It's been just over a year since I cast on the Couronne cardigan by Helen Rush. Other knitting projects took over for much of last year and now the cardigan is finished after spending most of 2014 neglected at the back of a cupboard. (I wrote a piece about this pattern and yarn back in January 2014 here).

The pattern is very well written and I enjoyed working on this project.  I used the same yarn as recommended in the pattern, the Ty-Dye yarn does make the colour changes easy compared to traditional stranded colour work. However, there is still a requirement to be careful with the tension on the colourwork sections, which I realised after I'd completed the yoke.

I'd definitely use this pattern again and recommend it to others.