It gives me great pleasure to share with you….
The Blue Sky Cardigan
Begun: mid-October last year; Frogged completely and restarted: February; Finished: April 19th 2007.
The yarn is Blue Sky Alpaca Silk and is a dream to knit with and to wear. It stood up extremely well to repeated froggings and is showing no signs of fuzzing after several wears. I used just under seven skeins in the end but hadn’t anticipated it being quite so long at the back.
Why is it an epic? To begin with, this was my first full-sized garment ever, and my first design project reqiring shaping. I did mammoth calculations for my first design, which was much more shrug-like, and reworked the pattern many times. Partly making it up as I went along, partly planning ahead. However, work ground to a halt over Christmas after I’d finished knitting about 3 skeins worth.
I finally realised that there was no way I was going to finish this project because, deep down, I knew I was going to hate it once done. It brooded at the bottom of my knitting bag for a while until I finally did what I had to do, and wound the whole thing into neat balls.
I started again full of renewed inspiration with raglan style shaping and knew immediately that I’d made the right decision. The knitting was enjoyable, the small pattern meant there were constant changes to keep the interest going, and I survived the 720 stitch edging!
I long ago gave up on the idea of publishing the pattern: there were way too many alterations and fudged bits. But people have been encouraging, to say the least, so I may have a crack at it one day.
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