Peggy Sue Cardigan

 

Here’s the latest big knitting project I worked on. I had decided to get back to knitting that summer cardigan, and since I no longer had yarn in mind for it, I went about choosing the pattern first. The one I had liked best when looking around months earlier was the Peggy Sue cardigan, so I circled back to it, then set out to look for yarn. The timing was perfect since I had a gift certificate from Dear Sister to use, and I wanted to spend it on something for myself instead of something I would give away. 

Did I mention that I have a thing for variegated yarn? Even though I know it’s not the best for stitch definition and this pattern has cables, I just can’t help myself? Well, I found the Video Baby colorway by Madelinetosh and just had to have it. It reminded me of what I was trying to achieve on one of those skeins I dyed. I ended up choosing the Farm Twist yarn over the Tosh DK, and it was a joy to work with! 

This cardigan is knit from the top down, which I prefer to other methods. The sizing was accurate and the 4 skeins I had calculated (based on the pattern’s yardage requirements) were enough, though I got nervous at the end. When I was about to start my third skein, I decided to knit the sleeves before continuing down the body as instructed, because I didn’t want to run out of yarn before finishing them. That being said, if I made this cardigan again, I think I would take it a step further and actually knit the button bands as I go instead of picking up stitches on the finished cardigan and making a moss stitch edge. It would make button spacing more difficult, that’s true, but then again I used 9 buttons (from my stash) instead of the 8 recommended, so couldn’t that be fudged a bit too? I think I would have had enough yarn for another repeat of the cables, but there’s no way to figure that out until you’ve finished the whole thing with the button bands, so you’re definitely not going to frog it at that point… 

Anyway, this was pretty easy to knit. The beginning is much faster than the cables, which get a bit tedious, but even those weren’t too bad. I notice the pooling of color changed depending on how many rows I could get from a given yardage (as I increased for the shoulders and suddenly cast off after the arm holes), but the overall look doesn’t bother me, so I don’t regret my choice of yarn. I really look forward to wearing the cardigan with my dress now!