The cardigan is progressing well. I finished the body a while ago, and now the first sleeve is done.

I’m following the pattern, but more and more loosely, treating it as more of a loose design inspiration than an actual pattern.

My gauge is much tighter than the pattern requires – I didn’t like the look of the yarn with a looser knit so instead I’ve adjusted almost all stitch and row counts. (It’s a good thing the pattern description includes centimetre sizing for most measurements.) I didn’t like the look of a cutoff right across the chest, so I moved it down for a more empire-like cut. I didn’t want a looser knit for the yoke so I stayed with thinner needles and adjusted the stitch count even more. Instead of a separately knit buttonband, I knit mine along with the body of the cardigan.

The sleeve cap was hardest to adjust because it has so many adjustable parts. First I tried adjusting for my tighter gauge by following the instructions for a larger size. The sleeve cap came out way too small. Then I tried to eyeball the adjustments and made a new attempt. The sleeve cap came out too large. The third time I measured and calculated and read up on sleeve cap shaping and even pulled out Pythagoras’ theorem. And now the sleeve cap curve length matches the circumference of the armhole, give or take half a centimetre.

Sleeve cap shaping is a whole new, unexplored corner of the knitting world for me. There are even online calculators where you can plugin in your numbers and get suggestions for how many stitches to decrease on each row. And technical terms – such as “sleeve cap” to begin with! I didn’t know that that’s what the curvy bit at the top of a sleeve is called. And the technical name for a garment’s armhole is “armscye”.