FO: Mary Mead

A short while back I wrote my first post in my American Wool Series about Toots LeBlanc and a cardigan that I was knitting that hadn't been released yet. I finished the sweater about a week and a half ago, the cardigan pattern has been released, and I sewed my buttons on today and finally took pictures!

I'm pretty jazzed by the finished sweater. 

It looks cute over a dress (top picture) or with separates (above). I'll admit that I had some reservations about knitting a cropped sweater but since the construction is top down and seamless I can totally add length if I decide I want this to be a bit longer at some point. Right now, I'm really happy with the length and how it looks over dresses and longer tops. 

 If you remember, the yarn is a sport weight alpaca/wool blend in a lovely natural charcoal; the perfect substitution for Andi's pattern which uses Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light. The sleeve construction is top-down set-in and this is the first time I knit this sleeve construction in a stitch pattern - I like it!

Pattern: Mary Mead by Andi Satterlund (Untangling Knots) $6.50 pdf download

Yarn: Toots Le Blanc 50/50 Jacob/Alpaca Sport

Needle: US #3 (3.25mm) and US #1.5 (2.5 mm) Hiya Hiya Sharp needles

Mods: Since this was a test knit I followed the pattern exactly for the size large. I have a 43 inch bust and knitting the large gave me 2 inches of negative ease which gives me a perfect fit through the upper bust, shoulders and sleeves and the appropriate sweater fit for a vintage style cardigan. The absolutely only thing I changed was to add an extra buttonhole in the buttonband since I have a weird thing about having odd numbers of buttons on my sweaters (that's my own personal finicky thing and has nothing to do with Andi's pattern). The jacob/alpaca yarn I used was a two-ply and less round than Ultra Alpaca Light so I ended up going down to a US size three to get gauge but that is the needle size recommended on my yarn's label so I wasn't really surprised by that. All in all, I'm very pleased with this sweater and might even add more cropped sweaters into my sweater wardrobe to wear over my growing collection of dresses.