Fair-Isle Cardigan

Last year at this time I was picking out the yarn I was going to use to knit my fair-isle dress, that I then finished in summer and showed in autumn. As I used different yarn than the one suggested in the instructions that has much less yardage per skeins I orderer way to much yarn and had over 1 kg left of Drops Karisma in all the different colors. I thought about what to make from it, maybe a blanket or some pillow cases? In the end I decided to make a cardigan, who would have thought that?! ;)The best part of this project was that as it was made entirely from left-overs i felt free to try new things not worrying whether the finished project would look like I had imagined it, because I didn’t imagine anything and I didn’t expect nothing from this project.

I simply picked out this pattern as a basic. I chose size S and used the stitch counts and the way of construction form this pattern. However I decided to work seamless and top down. Just because I could and because there were no rules for me to follow ;P

I started by knitting the neck ribbing and I shouldn’t have done that. Should have done that after finishing the cardigan, as you can see the neck ribbing gaps a little. But oh well!

I shaped the back and shoulder with short rows. This is how its done in the pattern, so I didn’t have to think too hard ;) the fair isle patterns are from the drops pattern, the dress pattern as well as from my head ;) I only used simple patterns. Again: because I could ;) When I knit colourwork I like to twist the yarns after every third stitch and this looks like that in the end:

Staring for into the bright sun for too long looks like that in the end:

I didn’t have any influence on which colour would be dominating in the end. As you might see I had a lot of blue and green left over. I tried to variate the colors as much as I could.

Another fun part I added to this project was, that I knitted in the round. which meant: steeking! Oh yazzz I cut my sweater open in the end. I secured the sides with my sewing machine and then: cut this thing open! And: it worked out great!

I stabilized the button bands and used the facings to hide the raw edges. Now everything looks clean and nice!

The one thing that doesn’t look so clean is the stripe alignment at the center front. To be honest I hadn’t realized that before I saw those pictures. I’m thinking about realigning the buttons, shouldn’t be a big deal.

As this winter is unusually warm here I’m not sure if I will be able to wear the cardigan often! BUT Marvin and I are going to visit Island in May and if this cardigan isn’t the perfect Island-Cardigan I don’t know what is!

But first things first: We’ll be moving soon and I have started to pack my stuff into boxes. They’re kind of in my way now when I want to sew! Also I fear that I won’t have that much time to take pictures and blog. So if you don’t hear from me as often as you’d wish (;)) you know why. I’m already so excited about my new sewing room. It is going to be bigger than the one I sew in now and I already bought purple wall paint! Yay! I’ll show you when I’m done!

Have a great week and check out this cardigan on Ravelry if you wish! :)

Katharina