Printed Silk Cardigan by Connie Chang Chinchio
- Brooks Farm Yarn Solo Silk 50% wool, 50% silk (400 yards / 113 g per skein), ~2.41 skeins, color "SW" (coral)
- US 3 (3.25 mm) Addi Turbo Circular Needle
- US 2 (2.75 mm) KnitPicks Circular Needle (for neckline and upper button band ribbing)
Hi again! Here's another in my series of sporadic postings :)
I started law school at UC Berkeley a few weeks ago, so my knitting and blogging time remains limited. However, I have a decently long bus ride (45-50 minutes each way) to and from school every day, so when I'm not madly trying to finish up reading before class or having to stand (clinging to a bar for dear life - lets just say the bus drivers get away things I would never accept as a passenger in a car) because it's so crowded, I have some nice, built-in knitting time :)
I had been wanting to knit this pattern for a while and got the yarn for it over a year ago at Maryland Sheep and Wool, but finally went ahead and took the plunge.
The Solo Silk is truly lovely stuff - smooth and soft, with a beautiful sheen and great depth of color. It has amazing yardage, hence I only used a little less than two and a half skeins. Of note, the dye did bleed when I soaked my sweater before blocking. However, comparing my leftover (unwashed) yarn to the sweater, I don't notice a decrease in saturation at all. Overall, I'm very satisfied with it.
My ongoing wacky gauge issues (I generally knit pretty loosely) and my desire to have a more fitted sweater (smaller than the smallest pattern size) led me to make some adjustments to stitch counts, etc., but otherwise I knit it essentially as written, with two exceptions. The first is that I didn't do the bust increases within the patterned portion, and the second is that I waited to start the neckline shaping for an extra inch and a half, so that my neckline scooped less deeply than the original. I also added a single crochet edging to the lower border of the sweater after sewing up, because that edge was curling like crazy. It seems to have done the trick - post washing and blocking the edge lays pretty flat :)
Here is a characteristic blocking shot with anti-cat devices (i.e. excessive, frequently placed T-pins, which weren't really needed to facilitate blocking per se, at least in the absence of cats) in place to prevent feline trespass:
(You can see that Bug appears to be considering whether it might be worth it to learn to sleep on a bed of nails, as it were. Really... who would want to sleep on a padded chair seat with a damp bed of silky wool so close at hand? It would be nice, at least, to massage with ones toes...)
Some close-ups:
I purchased the vintage glass buttons at Britex in San Francisco. My husband read about it online, and thought I might like to go there to check out their extensive button selection (organized by color!) in addition to the four floors of fabrics, trimmings, and even a small yarn selection. He was right :) Definitely worth a field trip!
Here's a slightly closer view:
I think the only thing I would do differently if I were to make this sweater again is to use an even smaller needle for the ribbing at the neckline. It would be nice if the neck opening was a little tighter, but works as is just fine.
Thanks for the great pattern, Connie :)
(Actually, she has a lot of great patterns - and I fully intend to knit more of them in the future!)
Have a wonderful labor day weekend!
