Of course it is probably now to cold for it to be useful but there is always next Spring, like my similarly coloured socks.

I thought I would like to share a few thoughts about my journey to this point.

Last time I showed you the main body without the completed sleeves.

Well two things about my experience since then: one good , one bad.

The good – I used my 100cm cable and the knitting magic loop method (not to be confused with the crochet magic loop that is a quite different thing). I was pleased to find that unlike my first attempt where I did have ‘ladders’, this time, having learnt a trick or two, the knitting continued smoothly all the way round.

The bad – when I had finished the sleeves I realised that the rib looked different at the end of the sleeve to that at the bottom of the body and decided to undo the rib on the body and redo it.

This was the original

Now the sleeve and the redone rib.

[Yes I know the colour is very different. It depends on the light – to my eye it can seem grey, almost blue or blue at different times.]

I think the problem the first time was mainly that I wasn’t sure how to purl into the back of a stitch and adopted a funny method that I corrected for the second attempt. I also wonder if I got muddled with the interchangeable needle tips and used the wrong ones. It is quite hard to tell the difference between 4.5mm and 5mm by eye and they don’t have anything stamped on them.

I suppose you can also say that a fairly good thing was that, having bothered to sit down and do a bit of maths, picking up the stitches for the button bands was fairly straightforward. (I normally hate it and make a terrible muddle of it.) The neck band was a little trickier as I seemed to end up short one stitch but still not too bad.

Knitting this cardigan was about trying out the circular needles, no seams method of making a garment. So what can be said about it.

Plus points

• No seams: that is a big plus point; worth several minus points.

The downside

• There was a hole under the arms that I had to close though that was not too difficult.
• When there are no seams the ends where you change to a new ball have to be sewn into the body of the work. (Since this was a cardigan this was only an issue on the sleeves and with larger balls of wool wouldn’t have been necessary but I made sure it happened where the seam would have been and I don’t think it shows on the right side.

*****     *****     *****     *****     *****

Now this was due to be a normal Monday post but I had forgotten that I had put off buying the buttons till I had the buttonholes.

I had had my eye on some swirly blue/grey buttons I had seen when I started the cardigan but 5/8″ is a less common size than 1/2″ or 3/4″ so I had to chose something else. In the end I am pleased about this as I think the white flower shaped buttons are actually a better choice and really make the cardigan.

So here I am wearing it.

[With no tripod or special lights having to take these photographs with the camera on the bedroom window sill with me standing or kneeling in front of the door, I find it very hard to look pleasantly relaxed with only 10 secs to get ready, so I didn’t even attempt to include my face today.]

Here is a slightly different angle.

One last thing.

I often don’t bother to iron or block my crochet or knitted items if I think they look okay but I did decide that this needed something if only because of the pattern of holes. Now I have only recently heard of ‘blocking’ so I decided to do my normal ironing with a damp cloth. Of course with sleeves knitted in the round this can’t be done when they are still flat so I rolled up a towel inside the sleeve so as not to have a crease and it worked fairly well.

And the iron is off at this point!