I have been enjoing the first couple of really warm days here in Linköping. Me and my boyfriend have been making plans for the garden and we have been caring for the baby plants.
Here is our little garden! There are some nice tulips going on right now.
The risk of snow should be over and everything that had started to sprout has also survived so far, except for the lettuce that died because it was too cold so I have planted new seeds now. The same thing happened last year… so maybe until next year I will have learned to wait… I’m planning to continue taking photos of the plants so I can follow the progress of everything.
Here are the baby Zucchinis that also got a dinosaur friend the other day.
I created a new space to grow peas, we will see how that works out.
As far as knitting goes I have some plans for nice projects but they are secret so far since I hope to publish the patterns on Ravelry, I hope you forgive me for that. Until then you will have to do with the Shapely Boyfriend cardigan that I’m currently working on.
The yarn that I’m knitting the sweater in, Novita eco cotton, is some eco-friendly recycled cotton mix that i bought last year. Its unusually soft for cotton and really nice to wear, and it was super cheap. However, I would not recommend it because there’s a lot of dust going on that comes from the yarn when knitting with it. The problem goes away after a few washes of the garment, I know that since I knit another sweater in the same yarn (but dark blue) and that sweater is fine now and there’s no pilling. It is however quite annoying to knit with a yarn that makes a mess and crawls into your nose while knitting… I would get a cat if I wanted that kind of experience.
One of the skeins also had like 5 knots in it, not ok! I got trust issues and had to re-roll the rest of them to not miss any knots.
I’m almost done with the body and will pick up stitches for the ribbing around the body. I have been following the pattern but doing another raglan increase, I always do M1L and M1R nowadays. They always look symmetrical and nice and don’t create holes.
What’s your favorite increase or decrease?
Here you can sort of see that there are side decreases above the hand and increases for the hip where the hand is. So it is quite a fitted cardigan.
I will also add pockets, and they will be adequately sized for an iPhone. There are black lines marking the pocket placement at the moment. If you have ever done an afterthought heel for a sock, that’s how I do pockets as well, so I will remove the black yarn and pick up new stitches.
I changed the ribbing to K1 P1 instead of K2 P2 just because it always looks better in my opinion. I am also planning on making more (and smaller) button holes and using smaller buttons. I don’t have any good buttons at home, so I will probably just bring the sweater to the sewing store when it’s finished to try and find buttons of good size and color.
I really recommend this as a first cardigan pattern. I have knitted sweaters before but without following a pattern, so my plan for this one is that it will be my first actually wearable sweater… The pattern is free, the sweater looks great (I guess I don’t really know that yet but it seems promising). It knits up super fast in aran weight yarn which is also important for beginners (because they have no patience). The top down construction allows you to make the sweater shorter or longer, and the sleeves could also be made shorter. I think it’s always a good idea to knit the sleeves after the button band, pockets, etc. because then you could make them 3/4 sleeves if you run out of yarn (and I love 3/4 sleeves).
Another thing when it comes to cardigans, many people nowadays are scared of purl rows and want to knit everything in the round and then Steek it, I think I would always do that if there was a lot of colorwork going on, but otherwise, the good thing about knitting back and forth like I’m doing with this one is that trying on the sweater as you go is so much easier! Whenever I’ve been knitting sweaters in the round I’ve had to change to a longer cable to try them on properly.
Thats all I have to say for today, hope to have more stuff to write about soon!
// Nelly
Nelly knits 