United Way argyle cardigan

Recipient: Jack Rosatelli
Designer: Meself
Pattern: 'Jack of Argyle' (PDF, 167K)
Completed: February 15, 2005
Colours: Navy, white and red
Yarn: Navy: Patons Astra, 100% acrylic, sportweight. Red: Innovation, 80% acrylic 20% nylon, sportweight. White: Zellers 100% acrylic, sportweight.
Completed status: Born February 7, 2005.
Thank-you note:
Thank you very much for the sweaters you knit for Jack. They are both so beautiful + will keep him toasty warm. Thank you again
Pictures of completed project:

front

back

2005-Feb-16

DONE! Yeehaw! Finished weaving in all the ends last night, and sewing on the buttons. I should add that the photos of the completed cardigan were taken before it fell out of my bag this morning into dirty road slush. Yes, you read that right. Disgusting, dirty road slush. How bad do I feel? Pretty damn bad. Fortunately, only a few parts of the cardigan here and there at the back made contact with the slush, and I didn't give the slush enough time to really "sink in", so it didn't look too horribly bad, just wet. But I'm still kicking myself over it. Hard. (I am also hoping for wonderful, glorious things to happen to the lovely woman behind me who actually noticed that it had fallen out of my bag, without whom I would be frantically pawing through my bag right now in a panic, wondering where the damn cardigan was). Anyway, this morning when I came into work, I folded it nicely and placed it on my co-worker's chair. I will definitely be warning him to wash the cardigan, and apologizing profusely for my clumsiness. Doh.

2005-Feb-15

Wove in more ends this morning in the car. I'm starting to see a distinct improvement in the tangle on the inside of the cardigan.

2005-Feb-14

The cardigan now looks like this:

But don't get too excited. The inside still looks like this:

Have I ever mentioned how much I despise sewing in ends? I've worked endlessly (it seems, and no pun intended) on this already and I'm still only about halfway done. I did do a bit of weaving-in-as-I-go when I was knitting the thing, but I got lazy and stopped. Turns out that was an incredibly dumbass thing to do. Oh, well. Stay tuned, because I'm going to be doing a dance of triumph when all the ends are tucked in.

2005-Feb-11

I have even more time to finish this than I thought - Rob is coming back to work the week after next instead of Monday as I assumed he would. However, I'm still hoping to get it off my plate pronto. I'm now on the neck shaping of the left front:

I decided not to bring it with me to work today, because I would probably get to starting the sleeves, and I couldn't be bothered this morning to hunt for a 4mm circular needle. But I expect much progress will be made this weekend.

2005-Feb-10

Wonderful news - the baby was born on the 7th. With any luck, I will have the cardigan completed by the time my co-worker gets back to work. (This is my hope, anyway.) Lots of work has been done on this - the back and right front are completed. I'm now about to start working on the left front.

2005-Feb-1

Due to the large amount of untangling that needed to be done last night, not much more actual knitting has been done on this project since my last journal entry, but I have begun to split up the cardigan for the armholes, and am now working on the right front. I also have a picture, sorry about the out-of-focusness:

2005-Jan-31

I am just finishing up the row right before the split for the armholes. My multiple bobbins of yarn are hopelessly tangled, but I don't care, the pattern is turning out very successfully.

2005-Jan-30

Swatch #3 is finished and looks good. I've now started work on the cardigan itself, and I like it so far!

2005-Jan-28

I'm now on swatch #3 - this time, with a significantly altered pattern (the diamonds in the original pattern turned out to be way too tall). The swatch is almost done, and I have to say that, apart from having screwed up on the pattern on the second set of diamonds, it looks great. Now I can figure out which rows the buttonholes need to go on, and then I can start the actual cardigan.

2005-Jan-23

Swatching continues, this time with separate bobbins.

2005-Jan-21

Needless to say, after my discovery of the Lewiscraft close to work, I zipped over yesterday to try and get some red sportweight acrylic. I got the VERY LAST BALL in the store. Happiness! Now I'm swatching. And I am praising myself to the moon for swatching first, too - I'm discovering pattern tweaks that I have to make, and I've discovered that there is no way in hell that I should be stranding the non-working yarns across the back (yes, I was actually going to try that). I'll be making separate bobbins of yarn for each argyle diamond, thank you very much!

2005-Jan-19

In addition to the 9mm needle for my poncho project, I also picked up some navy sportweight yarn for this project. Unfortunately, they had no red sportweight yarn, which I also need. In fact, although they said that all the Lewiscrafts are running out of Patons Astra because their supplier has been slow, this store in particular was just a mess in the knitting section. Very unimpressive. I especially enjoyed all the cardboard boxes I had to move out of the way in order to get to some of the yarn shelves (not). I'm going to go to another Lewiscraft as soon as I can, to try and find some red in the other brand of sportweight they carry (called "Innovations", I think - although it's marketed as worsted weight, trust me, it's sportweight). This is also the part where I curse Zellers for not carrying any non-pastel sportweight acrylic. :)

2005-Jan-18

Did some more fine-tuning of the pattern yesterday, but I still haven't had the chance to go out and get the yarn. Hopefully tonight.

2005-Jan-17

I charted the argyle pattern this weekend and came up with basic instructions. I still have to work out details like the neck and shoulder shaping, which rows to make the buttonholes on, how to shape the collar, etc. But the basics are set out and I think it's going to work really well. Now I just have to buy the yarn and get going.

2004-Dec-31

Did some research on what traditional Argyle sweaters/cardigans are supposed to look like, and I've come up with what Rob and I think is a very nice design. It'll be an argyle pattern on the body, with solid-colour sleeves, hem, cuffs, button bands and collar. I think it'll look really good. I also looked up measurements for what a 12-month-baby sweater should be, and I think I have my dimensions decided upon. Now I just have to do some swatching and yarn hunting so that I can nail down the gauge I want and so that I can design the argyle pattern grid.

2004-Dec-30

Rob got back to me today after talking with his wife. His wife has very specific requirements for this project! :) Which I don't mind in the slightest, of course. She wants an argyle cardigan in navy, white and red, in a 12-month size. So now it's time for research! I've never done anything argyle - I know it's a diamond pattern with criss-crossed lines overtop (or something like that, anyway), but that's about it. I'll have to look up what traditional adult argyle sweaters look like and then design a pattern for a baby size. I even get to choose what gauge of yarn I want! This will be neat.

2004-Dec-10

Well, as I've already mentioned, the auction was held last night, and the winner was my co-worker Rob, who bid an astounding $55. This makes me feel unbelievably guilty, because I'm ALREADY MAKING SOMETHING FOR HIS UNBORN SON! Which of course I haven't told him about, because it's a surprise, but since I always make baby things for expectant parents in the department, he should have known he didn't have to buy a sweater from me. Oh, well. I guess now he'll have two. :) We'll probably hash out what he wants over the next few weeks.

As of 2004-Nov-08

As the auction will not be until December, I have no idea what I'll be making, but I'll definitely be making something - starting AFTER Christmas.