Rhinebeck Ruined.

Posted on October 16, 2005 by knittingpatterns4you | 13 Comments

For the last 2 days I've had a bad stomach ache, and then today I woke up feeling like a truck had run over me. So of course, no Rhinebeck for me. Pout. I feel marginally better now (having slept 13 hours), but I think I had some kind of virus. It was the smart decision not to go -- spending 5 hours in a car and then walking around in windy, possibly cold weather isn't what you should do if you wake up feeling like I did this morning! Too bad, I really wanted to go. Maybe next year.

So as a consolation prize, I'm gonna show you my finished Karabella Cabled Cardi, only I had to cut my face out of the picture because I look like the Walking Dead today (I even put makeup on for this shoot, but still couldn't get a decent picture. Take my word for it, you don't wanna see the top 1/5th of this image!):

I really love this cardigan, it's the perfect fit for a cozy, wear it everywhere sort of thing. I made some changes, as I'm sure you can see: I changed the sleeves completely to give more relaxed, looser sleeves. I also crocheted a button out of the same yarn, because I couldn't find any button I liked and I didn't feel like looking for one in a million different stores. I also made the yoke looser by starting on size 3's instead of size 0's.

The knitting was easy and fun on this project, but the finishing. Ugh! It took 3 tries to sew on that yoke before I got it to lay flat. Initially I did it by eye, folding the yoke in half and pinning that at the center back, then pinning the half-way point from center front to center back onto the center of the sleeve. This worked fine until about half-way between the 1st center sleeve and center back, when I realized that I hadn't done it evenly and so had too much yoke left over. So I ripped it out and did it again.

After one more try, I decided to be mathematical in my approach: I counted the number of sts in the yoke, and the number of sts around the body, and figured out the ratio. Then I sewed through the appropriate number of sts on the body to the number of sts on the yoke. And that worked! I had to fudge a little as I got close to the end, but no one's gonna notice but me (if you can see something in this image, PLEASE DON'T TELL ME!).

All in all this project was a huge success. I think I've finally, finally, FINALLY learned what size I wear in knitted clothing! I made the medium for this, which has a finished bust measurement of 36". My actual bust measurement is 37", and in the past I would have made the largest size, because I was trained to always put in some ease in all my garments. I've read almost every knitting book I could get my hands on, and EVERY ONE OF THEM tells you to put ease in. Well, I've learned the hard way that I do not like loose-fitting garments, unless they're chunky pullovers. In a cardigan like this one, it's supposed to be form-fitting, and it looks good and feels good on me in this size. Hallelujah! I think I've got it!

Project specs:
Pattern: Karabella's Cabled Cardigan, pattern KK183
Yarn: 11 skeins Karabella Aurora 8 in color 43, kit from String
Needles: US size 7 for most of it
Started: September 25, 2005
Finished: October 9, 2005

Posted in Finished Knitting Projects

---

13 Responses

Leave a Reply

Name * Email * Comment

Comments have to be approved before showing up.