A different knitting project

I have been busily working on another knitting project while doing the various swatches for the skull jumper.  I am knitting a cardigan for one of my granddaughters.  The wool is lovely and soft and I am really enjoying knitting with it.  It is a very simple classic cardigan pattern taken from this booklet.

I have just added a little bit of colour with left over wool as a band around the base of the cardigan.  I have knitted this pattern before but I am doing it in the next size up this time.

I just have the band to do now.  I even have the buttons at the ready.

Look what arrived in the mail.

I can now start work on the actual jumper instead of swatches.  I had done a practice of the pattern with brioche stitch on either side of the large cable but was not happy with the result so unravelled it.

I then knitted it up with a single chain instead of brioche stitch and that is what I will do on the actual jumper as I found the brioche stitch was pulling up too much of the jumper as it is created over two rows.

The sample is on the brown cardigan which I am using as the basis for the pattern size.

When the wool parcel arrived I was delighted to find that the dyelot was the same as the two balls I had bought for trying out the pattern this meant that I could now just continue knitting rather than having to start afresh.  Bonus!

Progress so far.  I have reached the point to cast off to shape for inserting the raglan sleeves.

Further developments in my “skull project”.

Further to our working on pattern ideas for the skull jumper we visited Stitches ‘n’ Things in Lakes Entrance to choose wool that would be suitable for the project.  Initially we were going to use Cleckheaton Country 8 ply and I did a swatch in some left over wool I had.

We were happy with the motif and the cable extending into the cuff but the wool felt a bit scratchy and we figured if we were going to all this trouble it would be better to spend more money on soft wool so we bought some Bellissimo 8 ply to do a swatch.

I did a swatch first to check gauge and then I started with a practice front panel.

I then skipped up to just below the nose in the actual skull part to see how that looked.

This is the first attempt.

You can see that the cables are not correct as they should be twisted at the beginning of the eye sockets.  The nose is also too high up beside the eye sockets.  I then unravelled and tried again.

I am happier with this version although I think the nose needs to be longer.

I then went ahead and ordered the wool. I received an email saying that they didn’t have the number of balls I wanted and would have to see if their wholesaler could get me the required number.  Since then I received notice that the wholesaler did have the wool and would send it directly to me so it should arrive sometime this week.

I have done a bit more trialing of several aspects of the pattern.

I tried the crossovers on the back panel and I think I prefer the top crossovers rather than the bottom ones.  I also am happy with the extension of the cable into the cuff.  My daughter came up with that idea and I really like it.

I also trialed what we called the big chain.

It is a bit tricky to see here but on either side of the chain is a single brioche stitch and on the right hand side is a double moss stitch. I wasn’t happy with the way the brioche stitch was sitting so I did another sample of just the chain and the chain extending into the cuff.

I tried the small cable first and then the big chain.  I will go with the big chain into the cuff not the small cable.  The brioche works much better with an extra stitch on either side of the big chain.

When the wool arrives I will be able to start work on the back as I have now worked out where in the rib section the extended cables fit.  It took a fair bit of working out as there are so many increases in the last row of rib.  It was satisfying when it all worked out on the practice piece.  It is all squashed up here on the needle but it looks good when extended.