Aw yeah! Happy to be finished! bluesand

BlueSand Cardigan is a lovely pattern.  It has enormous amounts of detail and takes you step-by-step through everything, with photo tutorials where necessary.  It does have many elements you have to attend to for a good portion of the pattern, but overall I had fun making this.  I was ready to finish it already and wear it.  When working on two larger projects (this and New Girl) progress can seem fairly slow for both.  I made headway here and there in decent-sized chunks though.

Contemplating the yard full of junk.

Contemplating the yard full of junk.

My only real changes to the pattern include using fingering weight yarn and moving the slipped stitch portion on the arm to the elbow area for an elbow patch effect.  I added a couple of extra rows on the contrast color rows at the top, but my row gauge was close enough to the pattern, so I wasn’t concerned about changing much.  In my experience, superwash yarns grow like crazy in such a large garment, so I didn’t want to add any extra length to this already over-sized garment.  Since I used fingering weight, I went up one size from my normal size to get a pretty good approximation to the chest size I wanted. I didn’t actually do a wet block for this yet.  I steamed it, since I was eager to put it on and take some photos.  I think a few ripples here and there would look nicer with a wet block, but I’m happy to get to wear it. bluesand-2

Never thought you’d use algebra after high school?  Knitters use it all the time.  In this case, if you’re subbing yarn, you just need to know your stitch gauge from the swatch with the new yarn (you swatched, right?), then look at the total stitch count around the chest size (or wherever the fit matters to you most) and divide by your swatch’s stitches per inch.  Simple, simple.  I was within a half inch of my target chest size, so I just went with one of the written sizes to make it easy for myself to follow.  A half an inch is totally within the blocking margin of error.bluesand-3

At first I didn’t think all the pocket striping was worth it, but now I’m glad it’s there.  Same thing for the i-cord bind off.  It really finishes things nicely.

If you want to know more specifics about the yarn, further project notes, and yardage used, check out my project page on Ravelry.  It’s public, so you can see it even if you aren’t a Ravelry user (but why wouldn’t you be?).bluesand-4

I love this cardigan and I should get to wear it for several chilly mornings, evenings, rainy days, and in overly air-conditioned offices for days to come.

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