I first saw the pattern for this cardigan linked from Kristin’s blog. You can find the pattern at Knitty. Here is a photo of my finished cardy.
All three look completely different. Mine turned out slightly baggier than the original. The problem being that I couldn’t get yarn to match exactly the tension requirements of the pattern. I’m not very good at dealing with that. The answer appeared to me to knit one size larger on the pattern. According to my theory that should have taken into account the thinner yarn. It worked out quite well but not perfect. Still I’m not going to start again. I know that I usually do knit up yarn 3 times before I’m finished, but in this case I’m just going to live with it. It’s not so off in my opinion that it needs to go back to the drawing board.
The yarn I used was a mixture of cotton and linen. It knitted up well. I have a bit of an aversion to cotton yarn though. I think it can end up being quite shapeless. It doesn’t have that springiness of wool that allows the garment to retain it’s shape. Still this one doesn’t need a lot of shape. If I was to knit it again I would use thinner needles to knit the rib section at the empire line. The pattern used one size needles throughout and the combination of cotton yarn and not using thinner needle does rather beg the question of having the rib insert.
As I never seem to find the correct yarn for the patterns I start knitting I guess I should take more trouble to learn about adapting patterns. Anyone got a recommendation for a good book that would cover that kind of thing?
