Are you ever knitting along on a glorious sweater pattern and you can’t wait to wear it, only to be confronted by the sleeves at the end of the pattern? Then you feel slightly defeated as sleeves always take longer than you think. You’re not alone, knitting friend. I decided to overcome that with this Marshal cardigan by jumping straight to the sleeves and I’m not sorry at all. They actually seemed to fly by.

I like to knit the sleeves two at a time. Sometimes when I do this I can get turned around in the middle when switching from one to the other and forget where I am. I helped remedy this by joining them with a stitch marker at the bottom to make it seem more like one big piece I have been working across.

The yarn for this pattern is Brooklyn Tweed Shelter for the cuff of the sleeve and BT Loft for the rest of the arm, shown in the deliciously fall color Embers. Shelter is worsted weight and serves as an accent for the collar, cuffs, and pockets on this pattern, while Loft keeps the rest of the body light as air.

I’m growing to love, love, love this yarn. I had only use BT yarns once before on a sweater for Matt and I was super jealous that it was going to him while I was knitting it. When you feel this yarn in the hank it doesn’t seem remarkable and seems like it would even be a bit itchy. Knitted and blocked, however, it really blooms and it seems light as air and super comfy. It’s still not as soft as merino, but don’t underestimate it till you try it. I also like that it’s American made, since many of the yarns I buy aren’t. You can see how it’s made here.

I am hoping I will love this cardigan. I’ve been coveting it for a long time. It came out in the BT Winter issue in 2015, but I wasn’t sure it was my style. I decided to just go for it.

I have only seaming and the collar left on Docklight, so I’ll be posting about that soon!