Laura, Amy, and I had been talking about doing a sweater knitalong for quite some time. We’d narrowed it down to Melissa LaBarre’s gorgeous Garter Yoke Cardigan, we’d all bought yarn, and we finally set the cast on date for September 22nd. It seemed quite appropriate to start a sweater on the first day of autumn.
I’ve never done a knitalong before, and it’s been a lot of fun. We started with lots of emails about sizing, yarn choices, and math for resizing to our own gauge. It’s been a lot of fun for me watching/talking about our progress. Over the past few years I’ve gotten to know these two lovely women through their blogs and emails, and it’s neat to see how their yarn choices reflect their personalities and interests: Amy chose to use some of her gorgeous handspun for the yoke, using some of the ton of gorgeous yarn she’s been producing lately, and Laura’s color choice is subdued but cheerful at the same time, which seems appropriate as she has always seemed like a happy, centered soul to me.
My own progress, about a month in, is pictured below. Let me warn you that the color is way way off; I’m using Cascade 220 Heathers in Lichen, which is a beautiful, muted green heathered with warm browns. My camera had a really difficult time capturing the color without washing it out, which hasn’t been helped by the gloomy, rainy weather we’ve been having for about a month now. I really love the color of the yarn; it’s a departure for me from my recent obsession with blue, and I think it’ll make a great, versatile addition to my wardrobe. I’m a little behind the other ladies I think; I’ve been working on a giant gift project that’s taking up a lot of my time. I am excited to get back to this project over the coming weeks and see how we all finish up. So far I’ve been loving this pattern, loving the yarn, and loving sharing the process with two fantastic knitters. I can’t wait to see your progress, ladies!




Notes: My 

Notes: I made 
It wasn’t here when I got back and, when it still hadn’t arrived at the beginning of September, Saffron very generously sent me some PayPal money for the yarn. I felt so bad about this: the swap was entirely designed so that we enhanced our respective stashes without spending money! I went and treated myself to some new spinning fiber and hoped that that, too, wouldn’t get lost in the mail.


Pattern: 

But I dug in, got her measurements, and swatched away. She wanted ivory, and the laceweight KnitPicks Bare was the perfect color and the perfect weight; I also wanted merino or something equally springy so the shrug would hug her in the right places. I then knitted what was essentially a rectangle in Feather and Fan that was the length of her arms outstretched and across her back, from elbow to elbow, and the height of the base of her neck to the top of her dress in the back, with a 6 stitch garter edging on the sides. I used a provisional cast-on, and then did a 3 needled bind-off on each end as long as her arms from armpit to elbow. I then picked up the live stitches around the circumference of the neck/back and knitted 3 garter rows and finished it with a picot bind-off. Then, I picked up and knit stitches around the garter edging of each sleeve, increased evenly across the row to get a multiple of 18 (for the F and F stitch), knitted two repeats, did 3 rows of garter, and bound off loosely. A nice wet blocking and some pinning out of the picots later and I had a lovely, custom-designed shrug.



