yoke cardigan

 

 

I've never tried a cardigan before, let alone a top down yoke style, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I'm sort of following a pattern, sort of 'making this up as I go', since what I wanted was to feature the colored yarn without any Fair isle, lace, or stranded color work.  

 

The yoke of the sweater is the left overs from the mitered square project, the colored section of the sweater beginning with the full size skein of yarn I created out of the bits of malabrigo's sample nuggets of Rasta (a single stranded yarn for those of you not in the know), purchased from Jimmy Bean's wool, and then moving onto the less fuzzy, multi-stranded (plied) yarns from malabrigo (Rios?), Wonderland yarns, Patton's, and others I don't know the brand for. I'm still actually collecting bits and pieces for that blanket project, so this sweater may be stalled for a bit, or at least until I get the yoke to the correct size. The body of the sweater is going to be a Patton's worsted wool in navy blue, and it's possible I might include little bands of color around the bottom edge of the cuffs and hem, depending. Depending on a lot of things.

My last adult sized sweater was a disaster, and I can't say the baby pullover I made was much better. Baby cardigans are the way to go, people.

2/14/2021

This project has actually been less onerous than the last sweater I made. The problem I have run into has nothing to do with the sweater, rather the yarn. I bought several balls of the navy blue on sale and thought I had enough for the project until I got to the last ball of yarn and realized I was going to have a cropped sweater. I wasn't concerned initially because I knew I had another ball of navy yarn; it was a different brand but surely this wouldn't be a problem. 

It's a problem. They're not actually the same color. I wouldn't even call brand B navy, I'd call it 18th century French Marine, as it isn't dark enough to be what I've always thought of as navy. When I thought I would solve the problem by ordering another ball of the original Brand A yarn I have been using on line... turns out that is a problem, too. Brand A has changed the packaging as well as the dye lot; their new navy isn't as dark as the original either. The color shift shown is from the combination of the original yarn and Brand B, and is difficult to notice unless viewed in bright lighting. It is enough of a change that I'm not sure how I want to proceed at this point. Kool-aid dying might be in my future.