The Asymmetrical Cardigan from Knitting Nature, aka The Book of Bizarro Construction. The photo shows the fronts of the cardi – what you do is knit the fronts, bottom-up, then cast on a ton of stitches for the sleeves, knit the body and sleeves together (with some shaping for your neck), bind off a ton of stitches, then knit the back. Fold the sweater along the shoulder-line, and seam. Very, very soon this sweater will NOT be portable in any way. The patterning is pretty neato, very three-dimensional – those stitches really pop.

I’ve memorized the chart, but not before frogging back to the ribbing (before the photo was taken) because I was knitting the crosses in a way best described as willy-nilly. It was a complete mess, and not consistently so between the two fronts. Lesson learned – don’t hold a conversation and watch tv and think that I no longer need the chart. Gah. The yarn held up pretty well to the frogging, despite its delicate nature.

I’ve made a few modifications to the pattern. First off, I added a slipped slevedge stitch on both sides of each piece. The pattern calls for a selvedge stitch on the outer edges where you eventually seam the cardigan fronts to the back. However, you knit the button band (and collar) separately and seam them to the sweater, so it deserves its own ready-for-seaming edge. I’m also adding some standard waist shaping to the pattern.

I’m knitting the sweater using Malabrigo, which is very, very lightly spun. So lightly spun that my cast-on tail was literally disintegrating from the stress of being pulled out of and thrown back in my knitting bag. It was getting super fuzzy and blooming, so I finally decided to weave in the tails as I go. Hmmm, this doesn’t make me terribly confident about how the sweater will hold up to long-term wear. This makes for a sad kelp. However, the yarn does have killer yardage (216yards / 100grams), is reasonably priced for the yardage, and is beautifully dyed.

The yarn is a lighter weight than the pattern calls for. This means that I need more yardage than the pattern requires, so I’m on a quest for an additional skein that will somewhat match the yarn that I’ve already bought. Yarntopia is sold out of the olive, thanks to moi, and it’s not available elsewhere locally. This presents a bit of a challenge – the photos that you see on online retailers don’t necessarily reflect the dyelot of what you’ll eventually get. I’ve already bought a skein from Pure Knits, which has the most lightspeed shipping anywhere (I bought it Friday, shipped Saturday, arrived Monday, yeah!), but it’s a much different color so it’s going back. I think ebay may be my best bet here.

The last note on this sweater is that the Malabrigo is a different gauge than the pattern. This pattern and its bizarro construction means that recomputing for a new gauge is pretty tricky. Also, the pattern repeat starts at a different spot for different sizes, and I’m not entirely sure why. I know that the pattern lines up perfectly between the two fronts, but that still does not fully explain the chart starting and stopping points. I’m sure all will become clear when you join the two halves at the back of the neck. In any case, I’m not super eager to be futzing with those start and endpoints, so I’m simply knitting a larger size (but still following the length measurements for the original size), making some small adjustments for width below the arm shaping (it’s safe to move the left front start point and right front endpoint). Lastly, the pattern’s schematic implies that the Finished Width measurements in the pattern exclude the button band, which is 2″ wide. Something to watch out for, since I don’t want to be adding an extra 2″ of ease.

Will I finish this by the time we travel to the northeast for the holidays (T-minus 10 days)? Unlikely!