Seems like it took me forever, but it’s finally finished: my Tempest Striped Cardigan.

I started this back in December and worked on it here and there since then. I realize my spare time was divided up amongst a lot of things over the past few months: taking a wearable electronics course (god, I have to get to work on my project for that!), taking another jewelry fabrication course, learning how to use metal clay & setting myself up to do that at home (blog post about that to come soon), sewing a few things, and oh yeah, there’s that pesky full time job that I need to keep up if I’m going to pay for all these expensive pastimes.

Anyway, I’m quite pleased with this sweater. I have come to realize that my favourite knitted sweaters are made with DK weight or sock weight yarn. It takes waaay longer than knitting with a thicker worsted-weight yarn, but I love the finer fabric that results so it’s definitely worth it. This sweater was made with Malabrigo sock yarn, a plied, 100% merino yarn that’s really springy — this sweater has a ton of stretch to it and therefore fits quite well. I chose two colourways of yarn that were just a bit too similar to each other (863 Zarzamora and 853 Abril) — so instead of clear, alternating stripes, I’ve got a somewhat stripey mottled look. But the colours are fabulous! Purple is definitely a favourite of mine.

The pattern calls for doing a sewn bind-off on the button bands. I hadn’t heard of this technique before but I intend to use it a lot from now on. It’s done with a tapestry needle and takes longer, but results in a bind-off that has a lot more stretch than the usual method. I highly recommend trying it out if you’ve ever had problems with your bound-off edge not having enough give to it for comfort.

The only thing I’m not too happy about is the top of the sleeves. The sleeves seemed too narrow and pointy at the tops after following the pattern directions, but I went with it anyway. Turns out I really should’ve bound off at the top of the sleeves about 5 or even 10 rows sooner — you can see in the next picture how that extra length there causes the shoulders to stick up a bit due to that extraneous length there.

Despite the minor problem with the sleeves, this one’s definitely a keeper! I’m finally getting the hang of knitting things I’ll actually wear…and it’s only taken me about 160 knitting projects to figure it out. 🙂

Here’s the link to the Tempest Striped Cardigan pattern by Ann Weaver if you’d like to try it out yourself. And I’ve made notes about mine, including the modifications I made to the pattern, here on my Ravelry project page.