A Tale of Two Cardis . . . and Winner #24!

Congratulations to Jane C, our winner #24!


(BTW, thanks to everyone for the great knitting superstitions. One, in particular, hit home. I'll tell you about that tomorrow.)

It was the best of designs. It was the worst of designs. Mostly, however, it was my fault for opting out of the original design when the original was so clearly perfect.

It's a Knitting Pure & Simple top-down cardigan (#264) by Diane Soucy. It's easy, fun, everything you could ask for. And Goldisox wanted buttons. He really wanted buttons. God knows why, but he did. And being a Good Wife, buttons I gave him.

Unfortunately the buttoned-up cardi made him look like Ozzie Nelson, which wasn't exactly what I was going for.

I knew I had to make changes but didn't gather up the knitterly energy until this week when it all suddenly came clear to me. I removed the buttons. I lightly basted the button bands to the body of the sweater, creating a facing that would give the industrial-weight zipper more stability. I hand-sewed the zipper in. (Funny how those old dressmaking skills from years ago [when the only clothes I could afford were the ones I made for myself] dusted themselves off and pitched in to help.) Then I picked up stitches around the neckline and followed the directions for the shawl collar.

Et voila! A truly terrific sweater!


It doesn't droop like that on a real live human of the male persuasion but right now I can't get my resident human male to put the sweater on outside so I can photograph it but I'm working on him. This makes it look deeply v-necked but it isn't.

I am completely delighted.