Stripey Cardigan

Knit up this quick stripey cardigan for baby Alex using leftover scrap yarn.  These three colors, also used for Alex's vest and about a thousand other projects, seem to be never ending.  I am actually done with the blue, but more orange and green still remain.

Used the Little Coffee Bean sweater pattern, knit in the 12 months size, but with short sleeves. I added in a double stripe of blue a couple times to keep it exciting.  I cannot tell you how many additional ends that meant weaving in, but it was worth it.

Evolution of a Top-Down Knit Cardigan

A couple of months ago I saw that the Lion Brand Yarn blog was hosting a knit-along for a top-down raglan cardigan that was already queued up in my list of to-makes, so I decided to join in.  While I didn't exactly keep up with the knit-along or really customize the pattern in any way, I found it helpful to turn to the blog entries for guidance as I got to each turning point in the pattern.

The top-down raglan approach is similar to that used for the baby cardigans I have been crocheting- you start with the collar, increase the number of stitches each row at 4 strategic spots around the shoulders/armpits (creating that line of lace), then pinch the armpits together and keep knitting down the bodice until you get the length you want.

I ended up frogging (apparently knit-speak for unraveling) a crochet project I had been working on before, a tank top, after realizing it was somewhat ridiculous and I would never wear it (it helped that Colleen made fun of it when I mentioned it over Skype last fall).  I used the yarn from that project (which I had purchased with a Groupon at DC's Looped Yarn Works), Berroco Comfort, for my raglan cardigan instead.

I'm pretty happy with how my first adult-sized cardigan turned out!  There are some twisted stitches here and there (I'm not so good at fixing mistakes, so I just try really hard not to make them in the first place), and my seaming is horrendous (but there's not much of it and it's under the arm for the most part) but it doesn't bother me enough to try to fix them.  I would definitely consider making this again... as the knit-along demonstrated, the cardigan is infinitely customizable.  I think it might be nice in a finer yarn, too, if you could get the right gauge... the worsted weight yarns is a little heavy for Jakarta even though the sweater itself is short-sleeved.