Meet Buttony. I'm a little "meh" about this cardigan. The design of it is great, but there were some problems with the pattern. It calls for 9 balls of Debbie Bliss Merino Chunky, knit on US 9 needles. Well, I decided to knit the sweater smaller than the one size that the pattern is written for (cast on 80 stitches instead of 96), and I decided to add waist shaping. I also knit the sweater on US 10.5 needles. So theoretically, I should have used less than the 9 balls of yarn. But I used 12. That's right. Twelve. And I didn't even lengthen the sleeves and torso (they were written long enough in the pattern). I'm wondering if the yarn that the pattern author used wasn't Cashmerino Chunky, which has 72 yards per 50g (for a total of 648yds) instead of Merino Chunky's 55 yards per 50g (for a total of 495yds). I used about 650 yards. Also, looking at the pattern photo, the yarn has a certain sheen that Cashmerino Chunky has but Merino Chunky does not. So that's my verdict.
Finishing this sweater was a bit of a pain. I had knit to where you separate the body from the sleeves (it is a top-down sweater) and I had used 3 1/2 balls of yarn. I realized that I probably wouldn't even be able to knit a 3/4 sleeve sweater with the 10 balls of yarn I had. So I set out to find more. Well, this yarn is discontinued. And apparantley the color I used (401) was discontinued before that. So I ended up having to beg someone on Ravelry to trade with me so that I could get a few more balls of yarn because the yarn was impossible to find from ebay or an online yarn retailer.
In the end, its a bit too tight and the neck is a bit too wide. I was trying to conserve yarn and thought the yarn would block out so that I could stretch the sleeves a bit, and thus knit the sleeves kinda tight, but no such luck, this yarn doesn't grow very much with blocking (maybe because it is superwash wool?). I might end up re-knitting the whole sweater at some point, as I have 5 balls of yarn left over. Lastly, I knit buttonholes every 16 rows instead of 10, as I wanted the sweater to be a bit less "buttony."
And now, for a much more brief introduction to a WIP that will most likely be long-term.
This is an Elizabeth Zimmerman-inspired seamless hybrid, and it is great movie theater knitting. It is for a man, so no waist shaping needed, thus it is perfect auto-pilot knitting. At least for now. So I only work on this when I'm watching a movie in a theater, hence it'll probably take a while to finish.
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