My First Real Cardigan

Just recently I got the idea to start knitting sweaters, like real sweaters.  We're talking adult sizes here.  I decided to start simple with the Where the Wind Blows Cardigan Kit from Knit Picks.  It's a one piece construction top down sweater.  It's short sleeved, so there's no need to worry about sleeves or anything like that.  This struck me as an easy choice because it's such a simplistic design, yet gets my head thinking about the reality of knitting something wearable.  I had a feeling once I actually put it on for the first time, I'd be excited to make more.

Starting out, I fell in love with the yarn before anything else.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures that really do it justice, but the color is beautiful.  The yarn is super soft, which makes it even nicer to knit.  I just love the way this feels in my hands, which is one of my favorite parts of this sweater already.

Early on I ran into some problems, though.  First I cast on the wrong number of stitches, so I had to go back to the beginning.  Thankfully I'd barely gotten into it so I didn't have too much to pull back, but it was still not a shabby number of stitches to pull back.  It took me some time to work up to where I was again, which wasn't too bad, but it was still time lost.

Then there was the stitch count for the second increase row in pattern.  I just couldn't get it to work out right.  It turns out I was reading the pattern wrong, but by the point I figured that out I just decided to improvise and move on.  Right now it really bothers me that there's an increase in the wrong place and it's missing one in the right place, but I'll forget in time, I'm sure.  It looks fine and it's so completely subtle that I can't even find it now when I'm looking for it, so I'll just let it be and move on with the rest of it.

Knitting down into the body has been the most satisfying part.  There are some decreases followed by some increases to make shaping for the waist, I guess.  It seems really high to me, but what do I know?  I'm not exactly a talented sweater knitter, so maybe there's some wisdom in this.  It's coming together rather quickly, and I don't think I'll want to rip back and fix it if it does seem to sit kind of funny.  I doubt it will.  I'm probably just thinking to much on the whole thing and it'll be fine.

I'd planned to have this done in time to wear to a wedding in August.  With how quickly I've been working it up, I have no doubt I'll make that deadline.  I'll probably have it finished by the end of the week, if I'm perfectly honest.  I might have had it nearly done if I hadn't had to work over the weekend, even if I did just go in for one day.  It's amazing how much work can get done in even one day on this.  I think I'm just not used to working with thicker yarns.  I've done a lot of socks, which go together much more slowly, even though they're smaller.  It's kind of nice to have a piece that's coming together so quickly.

I've still been working away at the Hue Shift Afghan, one square a day on average.  I didn't do any Saturday and only finished half of one yesterday, but that's something, right?  I'm slowly working my way through it.  At this rate it should be done by winter, which would be nice.

And next on the list?  I have another shawl to knit.  I've also got to get myself some stuff for blocking, so that's on my list of things to do.  Then when I'm looking for something else to knit, I'm considering another sweater, something more ambitious than this one.