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| Woohoo! |
I started this project over two years ago, in November 2023. Given that I had managed to knit both my blue and aloe Wondrellas in the preceding nine months, that's a very long time for one cardigan. I got distracted by other projects, and possibly I was just a bit Wondrella'ed out. But since I picked it up again in October, I've kept at it.
I eventually got to the end of the second sleeve, and I even knitted the cuff ribbing as p1, k1 instead of k1, p1, so that the way the rib meets the end of the cable would be the same on both sleeves! Obviously, no-one will know this but me, but it makes me happy.
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| Why yes, I am a nerdy completist, how did you guess? |
Partway through knitting the fronts, I had begun to wonder how much wool this version would use (and it has used a fair bit more than the previous two), and I thought it best to buy an extra ball. Because it was so long since I bought the original yarn, of course it was a different dye lot. The base colour was the same, but there were clearly more coloured flecks in it. So I decided to knit the neck band and button bands last, in the hope that if I had to use a slightly different yarn it would be less noticeable than changing halfway down a sleeve. After the endless knitting of the sleeves, the bands came together very quickly - and I did have enough of the original yarn.
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| Slightly blurred (sorry) neck band pic |
Buttons. Regular readers (thank you) will know the trouble which button choice always causes me. This time however, it seemed to be straightforward, as I had a whole tube of the perfect buttons for the job - bought years ago at a flea market for pennies. But of course, it was more complicated than that. The seemingly identical buttons ranged from light grey to almost black.
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| Lighter or darker? |
In the end, I went for the lighter buttons. As with the previous versions, I backed the button and buttonhole bands with grosgrain ribbon.
And here, at last, is the finished item being worn. I tapered the lengthened the sleeves too early, so they are quite close-fitting towards the cuffs, but I have no intention of any reknitting! It proved impossible to get any photos which showed the cable detail clearly, so the picture at the top of this post will have to serve as proof that it is on there!
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| The cable is barely visible |
This project was a lot of work; I had to write out the pattern for the fronts line by line, and then alter it in stages to insert the cable instructions. (I'm sure there must be an easier way, feel free to comment!) But I'm delighted with the end result, and proud of myself for achieving it.
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| Part of my rewritten pattern and notes |
That I could do it at all was due to Tasha, the designer of Wondrella. She creates such clear, well-written patterns that I had a strong basis to work from, and that is why this mad idea of a still newish knitter worked. Thanks, Tasha.
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