You may have noticed a lack of knitting posts, which is because I have been making myself a cardigan. Made from Quiet Moments Jacket from Drops Design, and I used Drops Flora wool (colour 04). I have used this wool before, and it is a mix of alpaca and wool. It was bought from Woolwarehouse, and was very reasonable.
I am a slow knitter, so this has really taken me a while. It is knitted from the top down, and I had three starts on the yoke. I nearly gave up, but then my husband spurred me on, by saying how can you not be able to knit something when you design your own pattern. So I gave it another go, and although I know there are one or two faults if you look closely, the leafs around the top is my favourite part of the pattern.
I didn't completely follow the pattern when it came to the cuffs, and ribbing. The pattern has a tapered wider cuff, but I thought these would be a bit annoying. Once I started the cuffs I realised I had to make them quite deep for the arms to be long enough, so then decided to make the ribbing around the bottom the same depth. So the cardigan is much longer than on the pattern, but I like a bottom warmer.
The only thing that I didn't like on this pattern was that for some of the increases and decreases, it just says increase x amount of stitches evenly across your row. I can see this is simpler for the pattern writer when you have different sizes, but I didn't like having to do the sums, and then decide what to do if it didn't work out exactly. Too much maths!
I still only used 6 x 50g balls of wool, which is 50g less than the pattern recommends, despite it being so much longer. Can't work out why, but perhaps a leafy hat is in order for my 2 leftover balls of wool.
Still lots of time to join in Ginx Woolly Linx Party for May.