Focus

Greetings and Dear Cynthia,

Amazing that I actually finish things when I focus on them!

The front of my brand new FINISHED Tangled Yoke Cardigan:...and the front cable (self-portrait, literally):...and the back:...and the front bands:Revisions I made to the Tangled Yoke Cardigan pattern:

1.) Eliminated lower half of waist shaping. I casted on a smaller number of stitches, and worked the ribbing straight (no decreases) up to the point in which the waist shaping increases began. (In effect, I included only the upper half of the "hour glass".) I was a little bit wary of this, but it ended up working out well, since the ribbing flared out just a little bit on its own, anyway.

2.) I reinforced both the button and buttonhole bands with grossgrain ribbon. I used pink with white polka dots (a hint of "whimsy"). I first cut two pieces of grossgrain ribbon the same length as each other, and about an inch longer than the front band sections. I cut the ends of each ribbon with a pinking shears. I folded the ends under by about half an inch each. I sewed one piece of ribbon to the button band (hem stitched around the edges). I fused some interfacing to the wrong side of the other piece of ribbon and made nine buttonholes with my sewing machine (after carefully marking the proper locations with a marker which has "disappearing ink" -- found at sewing stores). Note that I intentionally made my sewn buttonholes a little bit larger than I typically would have for my buttons, just to allow a little "leeway" to properly line up the buttonholes in the ribbon with the knit-in buttonholes on the buttonhole band. Then I sewed the piece of ribbon having the buttonholes to the buttonhole band (hem stitched around the edges), making sure that the buttonholes on the ribbon and the front band lined up. I was surprised by how well these buttonholes function...without having to sew the inside edges of the buttonholes together to keep the ribbon and front band together...

3.) I used 5/8" buttons instead of 1/2".

I love, love the yarn -- the sweater is very soft and light, though incredibly warm (probably because of the alpaca content). I'm so tempted to make another one just like it, or maybe convert the pattern to try it with worsted weight yarn... For now, however, I remind myself that I must continue to focus on current stash / wip's.

The completion of this cardigan brings my current Mission Possible: 2008 score to eight done, four to go...

Have a great Sunday! My son is putting together his science project today. He's been doing the work on it for the past few weeks. He didn't like any of my ideas, though I think it's a good thing that he figured out mostly on his own what he wanted to do... He's been trying to grow crystals out of sugar...

Warm regards,
Laura (YarnThrower)