Friday, 15 June 2012

A Useful Summer Cardigan

(I've been looking at a lot of 1930s pattern leaflets lately and the language is catching.)  What I mean is, I have finished the cotton/linen mesh cardigan I wrote about here.

 I finished it a couple of weeks ago, in fact, and have worn it a few times already.  But I have been busy since then with my next knitting project, which I hope to wear tomorrow, so not much time for blogging.  But that's nearly finished now - more later.

The finished cardigan is in a slubby cotton/linen yarn from Stylecraft, now discontinued.  It is very rough to knit with, but nice to wear.  Knitting the mesh pieces was quite fast and easy, but finishing was tedious.  The button band took a long time - you would think that knitting a strip only 13 stitches wide would be quick, but it wasn't.  And then a lot of sewing.  The buttons are mother-of-pearl squares off an old duvet cover - I put them on as a temporary measure but they look good, and seem to take up the green of the yarn (they are actually a natural creamy colour), so I will stick with them.

I was a bit disappointed that the button band stands up higher than I expected at the back.  I should have anticipated that, because there is no back neck shaping - you just cast off the middle stitches after doing the shoulder shaping.   But in fact it looks exactly right with a shirt underneath.
  
And that's how it was shown in the original pattern.  It's from a Wendy pattern book, for a cotton/linen yarn (Pampas) that they produced in the 1980s, I guess.  The pattern had a dropped shoulder and I changed that to a set-in sleeve, and the yarn I used is thicker and nubblier, so the overall effect is chunkier,  but I think it has turned out well.



Looking at the photo from the book makes me wish for some sunshine to wear my cardigan in.  Although we have not had floods here, as they have in many parts of the country, it has been cold and wet.  Some proper summer weather would be nice.       

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