I crocheted a bunch of little bitty buttons for the cardigan. (Which is blocked and otherwise ready to be worn!)

Why not buy buttons? Mostly because I think using yarn buttons will make the buttonholes last longer. My brown cardigan is otherwise in great shape but most of its buttonholes are badly frayed. (Which reminds me to write a blog post about mending those. It’s been fiddly, and I’d be glad to avoid that work on this cardigan.) I also have a much older red cardigan with Chinese-style toggles in the same material as the cardigan itself, and those are not frayed at all. My hypothesis is that it’s the hard plastic buttons that are causing the fraying, not the general fact that the buttons/closures are being used.

I am pretty proud of that neat and tidy and even shoulder seam on my cardigan.

I’m still not done with the assembly. Knitting it was something that I could do any time, even as a background task. But the assembly is fiddly and takes my full attention, so I’m doing it in little bits when I have the time and energy and peace for it.

I’m close to finishing the second sleeve, counting down the bind-offs for the sleeve cap. The moment of truth is approaching. How well will it fit, once I’ve sewn all the pieces together?

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 plug 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”.

The cardigan is proceeding well. I’ve passed the armhole bind-off and now I’m continuing with the back, while the two front parts wait their turn. Meanwhile the knitting looks like a torture device, with cables and needles sticking out everywhere.

Knitting a cardigan from the top down sounded simple, but turned out hard to get right.

Knitting a cardigan from the bottom up sounded intimidating, but has thus far been easier. Although, the part that sounds intimidating is the assembly and of course I still have that ahead of me.

The previous pattern I attempted had a lacy yoke that I just couldn’t size correctly. Only when most of the body was done could I see properly whether the yoke fit or not. (The answer: not.) And by then it was too late to do anything about it.

This cardigan (Drops 88-4) is also hard to try on when it’s hanging in half-finished parts. But what I can do is lay the parts flat on top of an existing cardigan to check the size and shape of them. And that looks promising!

I’m preparing for a new knitting project, by knitting gauge swatches.

I will have a green cardigan!

I’ve found a new pattern that seems a bit more complicated than the previous one I tried making but maybe, hopefully, is also more forgiving. The bottom half is in cabled ribbing which should be nicely stretchy so the I don’t need to get the sizing 100% perfect. And the top half is simple stockinette stitch with no lacy complications, so the gauge swatch should be a good predictor of sizing for that part. The fit and sizing of the sleeves will probably be the trickiest part.

I straightened out those kinked hanks of yarn and wound them into balls again. For the n:th time. So now I’m ready for a new start. Because I still have this yarn, and I still want a green cardigan, and how else will I get from green yarn to green cardigan if not by starting knitting again? I just need to pick a new pattern.

Remember that green cardigan that I have now started on four times, and twice gotten most of it done only to realize that it does not fit? (First attempts in 2012 to 2015, then again in January 2018 to May 2018.)

It’s been waiting for me in my cupboard, half-finished for nearly two years. But whenever I think about it I mostly feel frustrated and hopeless, so I never actually pick it up. Instead I’ve worked on various other projects.

It’s time to give up.

This pattern is not going to work for me. Either it’s not right for me as a knitter, or it’s not right for my body – which would explain how I can end up with a cardigan where some parts fit me while others are way too tight or hang loose and floppy.

Today I ripped it all up so I can reuse the yarn. Deep inside me I’ve apparently given up on this cardigan a long time ago, because I didn’t feel the least bit of loss while losing all this work. All I felt was relief.

The poncho is generally progressing well. I’ve done the green part, and the gradient from green to blue, and then some plain blue. Now it’s time to start the snowflakes, white on blue.

The knitting of Adrian’s poncho is proceeding, but slowly. I wonder if maybe I’ve come up with a slightly too ambitious design… Adrian would be happy with something simpler, and it would be done faster. But then I probably wouldn’t be so happy with the result.