I sort of finished a sweater! This was an insanely quick knit. If I hadn’t had an essay to write and studying to do, I think I could have knit this in only two weeks. I used 3 (I think) skeins of Cascade 220 and I used 5.5mm needles on the body.
It’s a simple top down raglan. The stitch pattern is a modification of a pattern from one of Barbara Walker’s treasuries. I think it was originally called Rabbit’s Tails or something like that. I’ve been calling it modified bunny butt. It’s interesting because it isn’t an eyelet pattern or a cable. You work a bunch of new stitches into one stitch and it stretches out the give you something that looks like an eyelet.
The stitch pattern originally staggers the little bunny butts, but I wanted neat rows so I changed the stitch pattern around. Half way through my sweater, I realized that staggering the pattern would keep the stitch count even. I had a hard time figuring out my gauge and how many stitches to cast on because of the way I modified the stitch pattern. My stitch count varies massively from row to row, but I think it turned out just fine because everything stretches like crazy.
You might have noticed I called this sort of finished. Well, I was binding off the sleeve and feeling relieved that my sweater mojo came back and extra pleased that I didn’t have to knit any major part of this sweater twice. With a sort of cocky attitude, I went ahead and knit my button band. I liked the way that the 3×1 ribbing turned out on my last cardigan so I decided to do that again. Anxious to wear my sweater (because it’s cold), I sewed on my buttons and weaved in my ends. Bad idea. The button band does all kinds of weird things. It gaps horribly. It curls in. It pulls up. It hangs strangely when the cardigan is unbuttoned. It has to go. And sadly the coral buttons have to go too because I only have four of them and this clearly needs more buttons.
But as I mentioned, it’s cold. I’d like to keep wearing this guy so I’m going to leave the strange button band for now. I’ll fix it when I get home for the summer because it definitely won’t be cold there. I’m pretty damn happy with the sweater, despite the button band.
Leave a Reply