Thursday 29 September 2016

Insert fanfare sound here

                            IT'S HERE!!!!        

                                                       IT'S FINALLY FINISHED!!!      


 And I've been wearing it quite a bit. Yes it's the Campside Cardigan which (according to Ravelry) I have been working on since 27th March... That's like forever ago!!


It was meant to be one of my summer cardigans, I was hoping to have it finished around May, but nope... This thing just kept on going. If I was the kind of person who needs to find a reason why things go wrong I would say it was because I had little knitting time due to a hefty work schedule. If I was the kind of person who needed to give excuses for why my plans fell flat I would say that it was too big to carry around to do any portable knitting with. But I am the kind of person who will simply admit that I had more exciting things going on and more exciting makes to be making.

I also wish that I could say it was a pleasure to work on this cardigan in the moments I had working on it... But it wasn't... This cardigan was a right pain in the arse! Though in its defense it only became said pain once I hit the sleeves... My god those sleeves took an age!


So let's get the specs out of the way first...

Pattern : Campside Cardigan
Designer: Alice Plummer
Found on: Ravelry
Size: 2
Yarn: Lang Omega in light grey
Modifications: knit in a larger size than needed as went down to 4.5mm needles. Width added to arms and shortened whole thing busy missing off bottom repeat.

So this is what the cardigan is designed to look like... I stole this picture from the pattern page.


The picture on the right is obviously mine... Or a freaky double photographed by the designer... You decide.

I was massively drawn to it as it just looks so striking with its beautiful eyelet pattern running down the body. I also love a long cardigan and thought it would be perfect pulled on over a pair of skinny jeans and a floaty top. I also really wanted it to be the same grey as the pattern showed, if it ain't broke right?

The yarn I picked is as soft as a baby mouse! It is beautiful! I cannot stress that enough, I would use it again in a heart beat. But when knitted up on the recommended needle size I felt the fabric was really loose and gappy... Others may have Lund different but I think the silkiness of the yarn meant it just didn't puff up nicely. Obvious solution for this was to just go down a needle size. From here on I confess I didn't really do any sums, I just thought 'go up a size from the one I want... Yeah that'll be fine'. So I ploughed on hoping for the best. And because it's a raglan sleeve (I really loved knitting that part) I had no idea it would fit me until I got to this point...


Yep, that was hairy! But I'm really happy with the fit in the end. I also made the somewhat random decision that I wanted looser sleeves, so I just added 4sts under the arm and then continued to decrease as per the pattern. Because I was a bit twitchy about having enough yarn I thought it prudent to knit up the sleeves first and then continue down the body... I think that's why it just took so... Freakin... Long to finish them. And you know what?! They were too short in the end so I had to unpick the cast off and knit another inch on each of them.


Once I got going on the body again it was pretty quick to finish it off. I missed off the last pattern repeat (like so many people did) simply because I thought there were maybe too many eyelets, but I decided to just hem it at that point and have it a little shorter. 


I absolutely love the chunky ribbing around the neck and down the front, it really brought some lovely shape to it and again I enjoyed knitting up that part (even though the stretchy bind off went on forever!). And as much as I twisted like a seven year old who was told to do extra maths homework... I love this finished cardigan!! It really is exactly what I hoped I would end up with. So in the end I have a lovely autumn (ahem) cardigan to wear over my skinny jeans and floaty tops... With a scarf too.



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