Old Yarn, New Design

On Friday, after I blogged, I began frogging the wrap cardi. By lunchtime I was ready to start fresh. So what am I doing? I had in mind a hooded, button front cardi with a ribbed empire waist and deep ribbed turn back cuffs so I pulled out Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Guide to Sweaters, decided on a raglan shape, found my gauge and desired size and started making changes. In such a chunky yarn, I knew I needed my front bands to be fairly wide (dainty front bands in this gauge would look really dumb and try to flip around like crazy), so I took some stitches from the fronts to accommodate these. If I hadn't done this, the sweater would be bigger than I had planned and for this idea to work it needs to fit pretty close to my body.

The second change I made was regarding size. My hip area is bigger than my front porch so I cast on for the 38 inch size, knowing that the ribbing should fit perfectly over the hip area and compress in around my waist so I won't look like the Goodyear blimp. At approximately where the cardi was long enough to hit under my bustline, I worked some decreases down to the 36 inch size in the last row of ribbing, worked a Vikkel braid (see Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia for more information on that) and switched to stockinette. As you can see below, I now have the body on a holder and it's waiting for the sleeves.

When I went to grab some double points to begin my sleeves, I found that I didn't have any in the right size. I don't do Magic Loop or any of the other acrobatic circular tricks that have been recently figured out, so instead of losing momentum, I decided to knit my sleeves flat, which also gave me the chance to knit them both at the same time.

As you can see, I've got about 3 more inches until I'm ready to bind off for the underarm and join these to the body. I did a little trick with the ribbed cuffs - if you look, you'll see a little jog in the ribbing. There is a reason for this. By starting the ribbing as K2, P2, when I got to the place I wanted them to turn back, I worked a purl row on the RS (makes it turn better) and then switched the ribbing to P2, K2. This way, when I turn it back, the ribs will "lock" into each other and won't try to unfold. It also lays a bit flatter when the ribs mesh like this. The top part of the ribbing, where the cuff will fold over isn't as long as the cuff itself because I didn't want ribbing peeking out at the top of the turn backs.

Clearly, frogging the wrap cardi was the right thing to do since this sweater is practically flying off the needles!