Stripey Slouch Cardigan

One of my customers was wicked and evil, and led me astray (ok, so it's not hard to do).  Anyway, Louise contacted me with a query about a particular yarn that she wanted to use to replicate a stripey cardi that she had seen Jennifer Garner (AKA Mrs Ben Affleck) wearing.  She sent me a photo of said celeb wearing said cardi and before you know it, I am rummaging in the Jo Sharp Soho Summer Cotton (a firm fave of mine) to find colours to knit the very same garment (I chose Siren, Blush & Cactus).  Whilst Louise wrote her own pattern (clever girl), I resorted to adapting a pattern.  I chose the Slouchy Cardigan from Greetings from The Knit Cafe, which uses an 8ply/DK weight yarn knit up on 4.50mm needles so that the stitches are looser and therefore the whole garment is floppier, or dare I say, SLOUCHIER!

I am knitting it on circular needles, worked flat, so that I can take the different colours up both sides and join them in whenever I want to.  I have nearly finished the back and realised that random, 'whenever you feel like it' stripes might not have been such a good idea.  a) this means that I have to make sure the sides match (unless I am going for the chaos look) b) I now have no idea if my random stripes will leave me short of one or other of my colours!  Bugger!  Still, too late now!

I've been using my new 'favourite' gadget to help with all the colours, and this is the Yarn Daisy.  I love 'em, love 'em, love 'em!  Not only do they keep multiple colours nice and neat, but when you get to near the end of a ball of yarn, and it starts collapsing in on itself, or knotting up, thats when a Yarn Daisy comes in handy too!  Also, really slippy yarns (like Rowan Lurex Shimmer) are an absolute nightmare to work with, but with a Yarn Daisy, it's a doddle (I think you might see these little tools a lot in my blogging from now on).

This project is officially on the backburner whilst I attend to ('aaheem) 'other' more pressing garments (I shall tell you about those shortly).  One thing I am yet to decide is whether to make it reverse stocking stitch, or keep it stocking stitch and whether or not to have the seams on the outside (for a more casual look) or make it all nice and neat??!!

Comments

[kae]

Great to see you back online!

[nicole]

Nice work - daisy's great idea.

[Louise]

awww... shucks... you're too kind.
Thank You.

I love your colours--- and I think that perhaps the matching doesn't matter too much.. if its random--- and there are a lot of them. I think it would only make a difference if the stripes were really, really broad.

I mentioned that I started my own slouchy and have done the sleeves and about 20% of the back. The sleeves do have a very shallow sleeve cap-- almost a droppped sleeve really, so they're just about sewn at 90deg to the other pieces. I don't think matching stripes there would be as critical as doing a set-in sleeve.

My own slouchy has stalled (the yarn is surely jinxed) but I do love the pattern-- so maybe I need to restart with optimistic yarn?

Oh and did I show you the picture of...... ?

---- Only kidding :-)

[Sue]

Those colors look great together, although I prefer the stocking stitch side to the wrong side.

[Louise]

back again,
I restarted my slouchy and have done sleeves and back. Have you done either of the fronts?

I have problems with my stitch counts. The pattern as written suggested to me that the angled front shaping decreases would be all done by the armhole point.. but then I looked at the diagram and noticed that it shows one long even slope all the way up the front--
BUT then-- the words "and at the same time" jumped out at me--but out of context from what I'm supposed to be doing.. and anyway the stitch counts STILL don't make sense either way.

Arghhh... I'm fudging it-- I've frogged this many times over--my patience is at an all time low-- I swear this yarn is jinxed and the only reason I'm persisting is to avoid infecting other projects!
cheers,
Louise