The sweater it wanted to be

Before I show you how my cardigan turned out, let's review.

This yarn began its life intended for the Origami Cardi from IK Summer '07, but I was having Gauge Issues and decided that I didn't want something that weird and boxy and bobbled after all.

In this post I showed you how the back, which was supposed to be one Liz wide, turned out to be nearly one Liz long. So it got frogged and I started turning it into the Equestrian Blazer. I'm still too traumatized by all the problems I had there, so I won't recap in too much detail, but all the entries are here.

So I started working on a version of Glampyre's Minisweater and modified it almost into oblivion. I didn't post much about the knitting because it wasn't nearly as interesting as the other stuff I've been working on.

I finished knitting it the Monday before Thanksgiving and washed and blocked it right away so that I'd be able to wear it in my future BIL's freezing house in Oklahoma. But when it was time to leave on Tuesday, it still wasn't dry! What to do?

Bring the blocking with you, of course.


The sweater, pinned to the blocking board, resting in the back seat of my car. (I really hate how the picture came out so blurry but you can still see all those dings in my door!)

I'd bought some nice metal buttons but they were too big for the button holes, so Wednesday morning before Dave and I left his apartment for his brother's house I stopped at Hobby Lobby and found some buttons that made my geeky heart sing for joy.


Having done some checking, this turns out to be a pretty inaccurate reproduction of several different German coins, but heck, I'm a historian, not a coin collector. The Vereinsthaler was the coin used by the German trade confederation in the 1850s and 1860s, and after the birth of the German empire in 1871 (see the year on the coin?) it was used to represent three marks, or so Wikipedia tells me. "Ein Pfund Fein" means "one pound exactly."

At FBIL's, when the sweater was finally dry and I sat down to sew on the buttons, I realized that I'd left the yarn at home, so I made due and sewed them on with some of the green sock yarn, which is probably not going to last very long as the knots keep slipping. You can actually see a bit peeking out from behind that button.

With the buttons on and everything finally ready, the yarn had finally become the sweater it wanted to be. I love it so!


The Specs
Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Spruce
Pattern: Minisweater/Boobholder
Mods: I think the only thing I didn't change was the cast on numbers and the raglan increases. I changed the rate of neckline increases and made it a full-sized sweater with waist shaping and 3/4 sleeves. Oh, and as a somewhat tall girl, these are my first ever actual 3/4 length sleeves: they actually hit where they're supposed to, instead of right at the elbow! I love knitting.

It may not be too obvious in these pictures, but I knit the garter edging at the hems on sideways rather than normally. I think it's a nice touch.


I heart my new sweater!