Finished!

I finished and blocked the Katahdin Cardigan!  This was a lot of knitting, but the finished cardigan is cozy and snuggly without being too heavy.  I knit it in Malabrigo Arroyo in Azules, which is a tonal blue colorway that knits up looking like Paua shell.  I used almost 2000 yards for this cardigan, but I did make a few changes from the pattern.

The pattern has waist shaping, which is usually a good idea, but in this case, with an open cardigan, I knew it wasn't going to really do any shaping, it would just pull towards the back.  Instead I added some A-line shaping instead.  I mean, if you're looking for a shaped garment, you're not going to finish it off with a huge, dramatic shawl collar and hide all that shaping, right?  So I went with the big and snuggly.  I also made the sleeve cuffs shorter than the pattern called for.  Garter stitch takes forever to get any length, and I didn't think I had the intestinal fortitude to knit cuffs as deep as the pattern calls for.  (Mine are still a couple of inches, though.)

The collar is definitely a commitment. It's not hard to knit, there's just a lot of different stitch patterns and the original pattern was written as a leaflet for a yarn company: they used as little paper as possible, so I found it easier to make a list of each of the steps and manually checked them off as I went.  Overall, I enjoyed knitting this, and I believe it will be nice to toss on when the weather cools off again!