tisdag 15 augusti 2017

Cockatoo Brae

Cockatoo Brae cardigan, the most beautiful and most difficult cardigan ever.

I'd say, the difficulty in this cardigan is getting a good fit. It's not more diffcult than any other cardigan to knit, but getting a good fit isn't easy at all.

I have knitted so many sweaters, so many fitted cardigans so many garments but this one I failed completely to fit my body, even if I was prepared to make adjustments it just wasn't enough.

I have already knitted it once, and I'm not happy with anything else but the Fair Isle colour fading.

The inspiration is an old black and white photo, more yellowish than white and a fading scale of black to palest gray.



 I'll remake the whole body and sleeves since only the yoke fitted (and that before the button panels are knitted.

 The cardigan is way too big around the shoulders from where the sleeves are set in place to where the yoke starts. At the same time the sleeves are terribly narrow and the cuffs too tight. Weird.

Knitting this is like wrestling because of quite thick yarn and tiny needles. You really need a strong needle, so I have bought ChiaoGoo Red even if I normally avoid products being produced in Asia, shipped to US and then distributed to Europe but I have bent all my stashed needles in this size range.
Started all over with beaded rib from Foxglove, 26 rows on needle 2.0mm, else the rib didn't look good, and I got the circumference I needed.
22 rows of full amount of stitches divided into front and back , then decrease in each side every 14:th row (120 rows). Increase for bust every 8th row Three times (144 rows) and 2 ending plain rows.
Provisional cast on for sleeves and joined to continue in the round.
Body looks larger than this size should give so I'm still confused over this cardigan with the narrowest sleeves ever and the generous width over the shoulders.
It's a bit of a love AND hate story knitting this cardi'. It's the most beautiful cardigan ever, but I'm so confused over the fit being so far from my quite normal body shape. OK, a skinny teenegar looks fantastic in this the way it's designed, but the pear chubby me, I'm confused. It must be something with the knitting machine gauge v s the hand knit gauge which is quite hard to match.

I'll make many more short rows after the sleeve join and after the yoke another short row and more decreases to avoid the gaping neck.