The green cardigan's almost finished!

I've been trying to knit a cardigan with this green Rowanspun Chunky for ages. It started out last year as the Nicky Epstein Cardigan with Cabled Points, but the pattern made me so cross that I unravelled the whole thing in a fit of pique. I'd made it all the way through the back, both sleeves and half of the left front, so it wasn't a decision to be taken lightly. That was a heck of a lot of knitting to undo!

In the middle of March I decided to embrace the ways of Ann Budd, and write my own pattern.

I feel as though I've been working on this forever, probably because I've been knitting with this yarn since September, but it's actually taken about ten weeks from writing the pattern to finishing the cardigan. I've also had a good few weeks where I didn't knit at all because of my wonky wrist.

As this is the first pattern I've written myself (except for the pink scarf, which wasn't quite as complicated!), I really wasn't certain how it would come out. Thankfully, I'm really pleased with it!

Here you can see me wondering whether the edges will actually meet, so I can put the zip in.
(The answer's yes, it's very stretchy!)

The only thing I would change is the fit of the armscye. Ann Budd's measurements are quite generous in this area and I prefer a more fitted style, so I'll be making the sleeve head a bit smaller in my next pattern. Otherwise, the waist shaping is in the right place, the measurements are spot on, and I'm really pleased!



In other news, the Ebay saga continues.

The buyer who was bidding on my boots but had the "non paying bidder" feedback has now been formally removed from Ebay, and her bids have been cancelled. Hoorah!

This is, of course, great! Justice has been served, and all that. However, it does mean that I've just lost twenty quid's worth of bids on my boots. , maybe you'll grab a bargain! ;)

Moss-stitch trim zip-up cardigan.

The Dreaded Lurgy keeps striking me down in sudden and annoying ways, so I have mostly spent the weekend quietly knitting.

The first part of the weekend was spent unravelling, when I realised that I couldn't bear to knit another stitch on the Cardigan with Cabled Points, and I was no longer certain that I actually wanted to wear it even if I did force myself to get it finished. So, I made the executive decision to unravel the whole thing.

I still wanted to knit a zip-fronted cardigan, but I decided to go for something a lot simpler. No pointy bits, no cabling on rows that didn't line up, just a simple fitted cardigan.

Having turned to Ann Budd for help, I managed to get this far:

I've typed the pattern out below, for a size 36" chest. Once the cardigan's finished, I'll write out the pattern in more sizes and make it available, probably as a PDF file. It should work with any chunky weight wool.

I haven't checked the pattern for any glaring errors yet, mostly because I haven't finished knitting it! I'll make edits as I go along, if I find anything that's difficult to follow.

If you decide to follow the pattern and find anything odd about it, please let me know!


Moss Stitch Trim Zip-Up Cardigan

Wool used - RowanSpun Chunky, approximately 525 metres.
Any chunky weight yarn should work out fine, as long as the gauge is correct.
7.5mm straight needles.
12 stitches and 18 rows to 4 inches.

The pattern below is for a finished chest measurement of 36".

Back
Cast on 54 sts
Moss stitch for 10 rows
St st until piece measures 6"
Dec 1 st at each end of next and foll alt row*
Work 5 rows even
Inc 1 st at each end of next and foll alt row
Work even until piece measures 13"
Armhole Shaping
Cast off 3 sts at beg of next 2 rows
Cast off 2 sts at beg of next 2 rows
Dec 1 st at each end of next and foll alt row
Work even on 40 sts until armhole measures 8½"
Shoulder Shaping
Cast off 5 sts at beg of next 4 rows
Cast off rem 20 sts for back neck

Left Front
Cast on 27 sts
Moss stitch for 10 rows
Change to st st, keeping 6 sts in moss stitch at end of all rows. (This creates self band.)
St st until piece measures 6"
Dec 1 st at beg of next and foll alt row*
Work 5 rows even
Inc 1 st at beg of next and foll alt row
Work even until piece measures 13", ending on ws row.
Armhole Shaping
Cast off 3 sts at beg of next row
Cast off 2 sts at beg of foll rs row
Dec 1 st at beg of each rs row, 2 times
Work even on 20 sts until armhole measures 7", ending with ws row
Neck Shaping
Slip 6 edge sts onto stitch holder
Join new yarn, and work to end of row
At beg of next ws row, cast off 5 sts
Cast off 1 st at beg of next rs row (neck edge), 2 times
Then dec 1 st at neck edge every rs row, 3 times
Cont even on 4 sts until piece measures same as back, ending with ws row.
Shoulder Shaping
Cast off 4 sts.

Right Front
Cast on 27 sts
Moss stitch for 10 rows
Change to st st, keeping 6 sts in moss stitch at beginning of all rows. (This creates self band.)
St st until piece measures 6"
Dec 1 st at end of next and foll alt row*
Work 5 rows even
Inc 1 st at end of next and foll alt row
Work even until piece measures 13", ending on rs row.
Armhole Shaping
Cast off 3 sts at beg of next row
Cast off 2 sts at beg of foll ws row
Dec 1 st at beg of each ws row, 2 times
Work even on 20 sts until armhole measures 7", ending on rs row
Neck Shaping
Work to last 6 sts.
Slip 6 edge sts on to stitch holder.
At beg of next rs row, cast off 5 sts
Cast off 1 st at beg of next ws row (neck edge), 2 times
Then dec 1 st at neck edge every ws row, 3 times
Cont even on 4 sts until piece measures same as back, ending with ws row.
Shoulder Shaping
Cast off 4 sts.

Neck Band
Sew fronts to back at shoulder seams
Mark centre back
Work on 6 sts of each front band in moss stitch until they are long enough to meet at centre back
Cast off and sew bands together at centre back, or graft bands together
Sew bands to fronts and back neck.

Sleeves
Cast on 28 sts
Moss stitch for 10 rows
Change to st st
Inc 1 st at each end of every 6 rows, 9 times
Work even on 46 sts until piece measures 16" (or desired length to armhole)
Shape Cap
Cast off 3 sts at beg of next 2 rows
Cast off 2 sts at beg of next 2 rows
Dec 1 st at each end of every rs row, 2 times (32 sts)
Dec 1 st at each end every 4 rows
Dec 1 st at each end of every rs row, 6 times
Cast off 4 sts at beg of next 2 rows
Cast off rem 10 sts

Finishing
Block all pieces, if necessary
Sew fronts to back at side seams
Sew sleeve seams
Set sleeves into armholes
Insert zip at centre front.

Notes
*If you do not require waist shaping, simply leave these rows out, and work even until piece measures 13".

As you knit the fronts, you may find that the moss stitch pulls the work upwards. you can gently stretch the bands out as you go, or you can leave it, and even things out when you block.

When you knit the bands, you may find that you need to knit them longer than you think, in order to stretch them around the curves of the crew neck.

Cardigan with Cabled Points - the left front.

My newest issue of Simply Knitting magazine has arrived!

The free gift this month is a pattern counting device, which is perfectly timed, as I keep losing track of my cables.

I spent much of yesterday afternoon knitting, and swearing. I don't know what it is about this particular cardigan, but swearing seems to have accompanied its entire construction so far.

(The back and sleeves are complete, and I'm working on the left front.)

First I was annoyed that the edge cable and the point cables don't twist on the same rows.

Then I was annoyed that my tension changed when the cabled points stopped, and now my edge cables are getting smaller and smaller! Either that or I've lost count, and am cabling on the wrong rows.

Either way, this cardigan is very annoying.

(Why would all the cables not twist on the same row? Why?!)

Looking at the photograph, you can see very clearly that it's definitely my tension that's mucking up the edge cabling. You can see that the knitting between the two short cables is much looser than the knitting immediately above them.

Do I unravel an afternoon's work and start again, or can I live with wonky cables that might even themselves out in the wash? I'm feeling quite inclined to live with it at the moment.

Speaking of cables, for weeks I walked past this jumper in my local Marks & Spencer.



Every time I saw it I thought, "I could knit one of those".

If I'm not heartily sick of cables when I'm finished with this cardigan, I might give it a go. The one change I would make is to mirror the cables on either side of the central section. It annoys me (another thing!) about the Nicky Epstein cardigan that all the cables face the same way, so I don't really want to knit a second annoying cabled garment!

I did learn something extremely useful while I was knitting this cardigan. I learned that if you expect all the cables to be twisting on the same row, and don't read the pattern properly, and then discover that you should have cabled the front band two rows ago... it is perfectly possible to carefully drop the six stitches you're working on for those two rows, twist them round to make the cable, and then pick those two rows back up again.

This is not something I'd like to make a habit of doing, but I'm pleased to find out that it works!

Two Sleeves in Two Days

Now that my Dad has opened his Christmas present (my parents are going away this year), I can safely reveal that it has taken three weeks to knit a single glove for him. It was ribbed, it was fiddly, and it was in DK, which is the thinnest yarn I have ever used.

Now that I don't need to have the second glove finished until he comes back from his travels (oops...), I decided to give my fingers a bit of a break, and go back to the Nicky Epstein Cardigan with Cabled Points. I knew that knitting with chunky wool on 7½mm needles would be much faster than ribbing in DK, but I wasn't expecting to complete both of the sleeves in just two days!

I'd completely lost track of where I was up to on the first sleeve, so I decided to bite the bullet, unravel what I'd done, and start again. I'm really not having very much luck with this pattern.

This time the mistake genuinely wasn't mine, but a printing error. The row numbers for the sleeve had been printed wrongly, and before I knew it I had three fewer stitches than I needed. I made an executive decision not to undo the sleeve again, but instead to make some cunningly disguised increases on the next row. Thankfully, this worked really well.

I also made an executive decision to change the increases on the sleeves. As you may have noticed on my previous encounter with this cardigan, my maths really isn't up to much, and I couldn't cope with cabling on every sixth row and increasing on every eighth. My decision was to make the increases on the same rows as the cables, which made for less counting, which is fine by me!

As it happened, by the time I'd finished the correct number of increases the sleeve was already at the exact length I was supposed to keep knitting to, so if I'd been increasing every eight rows instead of every six, it would actually have been several inches too long!

If you click through to the larger picture of the single sleeve, you can get a much better indication of how this will look once it's finished. You can really see the bright flecks of blue, and the occasional spot of red, scattered across the sleeve.

It seems I owe Nicky Epstein an apology.

In the greatest tradition of these things, it's not her, it's me.

I did say that I was mathematically challenged, when I was complaining about this cardigan pattern being all wrong. As it turns out, I am also challenged in the department of being able to read a knitting pattern. Oops.

What I was trying to do was:
k12 sl1 k1 psso k1 k2tog, k12 sl1 k1 psso k1 k2tog, k12 sl1 k1 psso k1 k2tog...

and what I should I have been doing was this:

k12 sl1 k1 psso k1 k2tog k12, k12 sl1 k1 psso k1 k2tog k12, k12 sl1 k1 psso k1 k2tog k12...

Spot the extra "k12" in the second line, which makes all the difference.


Anyway, I have now finished the back, and aside from my own stupidity, it was extremely easy to knit.

The waist shaping at the back is achieved entirely by the cables pulling the knitting in - there's no shaping in the back at all, apart from the armholes.

The last photo is probably the most accurate in terms of the colour. The wool is Rowanspun Chunky, which I bought in the sale at Cucumberpatch

The only change I've made so far is that I'm knitting it on 7.5mm needles instead of 8mm. The smallest size given in the pattern was 38" and I wanted mine to be a little tighter than that, so hopefully the slightly smaller gauge will make just enough difference.

(You watch the damn thing turn out too small now!)

Nicky Epstein's Cardigan with Cabled Points

Has anybody ever successfully knit Nicky Epstein's Cardigan with Cabled Points?

The pattern is in a supplement with this month's Knitting magazine (UK). I find it suspicious that I've just trawled through fifty-four pages of Google images and the whole of Flickr, and I can't find a single photograph of the finished garment. (I'd try Ravelry, but I'm still 31,783rd in the queue to join!)

I'm asking because I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon unravelling the damn thing. I am amazed at how utterly wrong a pattern can be, and still make it through to publication!

I was making the smallest size, for which the instructions are:

Cast on 116.
Row 1: K12, skp, k1, k2tog, k12 - rep to end.

Except that first row only adds up to 114 stitches.

I decided to persevere, pulling the two extra stitches off the needle, carefully unpicking the slip knot and unravelling them, in order not to have to unravel the entire thing straight away.

Row 2: p. Not much that can go wrong there.

Row 3: k11, skp, k1, k2tog, k11 - rep to end.

Uh-oh. These decreases don't line up neatly with the ones below. (Which is what we want if we're making points.) I persevere, and reach the end of my last k11 with a mere seven stitches left over.

This is not going well.

I break out the calculator.

Anyone who knows me will be aware that my maths skills are pretty much non-existent, so there may have been a certain amount of swearing involved at this point. I carefully work out the new repeats, unravel the whole thing, and start again with 114 stitches. Unfortunately my carefully worked out maths is completely wrong, and I have to unravel the first three rows and start again for the third time.

Third time lucky - I put in lots and lots of stitch markers where I want the decreases for the points to be. It's like knitting a porcupine, but at least I now have clues as to what I'm supposed to be doing. I decrease away happily.

Unfortunately, by row 9 I already have fewer stitches than I'm supposed to have at the end of row 13, and my points aren't coming out the right shape (according to the picture) at all. I've checked the internet for corrections, and all I can find is something relating to the numbering of rows on the sleeves. Nothing at all which mentions the maths for the points is all wrong.

It's at this point that I give up, unravel the entire thing again, and start knitting a nice simple cardigan from Simply Knitting March 2007. I'm adding some shaping to the back to make it a bit less like a giant rectangle with two cables down the front, but so far it's knitting up beautifully and I can't fault the pattern at all.



I'd be quite interested to know whether anybody at Knitting actually had to knit the cardigan that's shown in the picture, or whether it was a stock photo from one of Nicky Epstein's books. Either way, I'd be interested to know how a pattern which is so completely wrong can make it through to publication without anybody apparently having knitted it! The mistakes are obvious by the second row, so you'd be aware of the problem straight away.



If anybody does actually have a list of errata for this pattern, I'd really like to see it. I really want to knit it, as it's a beautiful cardigan, but I'm damned if I can figure out how to fix the pattern by myself!