Start to Finish: Channel Cardigan

The Channel Cardigan begins with casting on stitches for the entire body of the sweater; for my size that is over two hundred stitches to cast on. Rather than trying to estimate the amount of yarn needed to long-tail cast on that many stitches I used both ends of my wound yarn to cast on. 

However, if you've wound your yarn into balls, or can't find both ends, you can generally estimate one inch of yarn per cast on stitch for worsted weight yarn. To test how much tail you need, you can cast on a stitch, mark the beginning and end of the yarn you just used, pull out the cast on stitch to see the length of yarn you used and multiply that length by the number of stitches you need to cast on. I like using the two-end method because I don't need to estimate anything and that's worth having an extra tail of yarn to weave in at the end. 

Since I took this project on vacation with me I was able to get quite a bit done. Unfortunately, I was having such a nice time that I didn't realize that I neglected to  change the needle size after the ribbing and had to rip out about 8 inches of knitting. After throwing a little tantrum I ripped out the necessary length and got the sweater back on the correct needle size. 

There is a lot of texture knit into this cardigan and it's slow going at first but once the stitch patterns are established it's quite easy to keep track of where you are in the pattern.  

I'm just past the waist decreases and, as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm skipping the belt so I omitted the eyelets used to make the belt loops. The next section of the pattern includes waist increases and front shaping decreases for that large shawl collar. As soon as I reach the part of the pattern where the fronts and back are divided for the raglan sleeves I'm going to stop knitting and figure out the math for converting this to a set-in sleeve cardigan.

Start to Finish: Channel Cardigan

Last year I did a series called Start to Finish with my Pomme de Pin Cardigan that went through my decision making and knitting process and I've decided to repeat the process for my next sweater project.  I belong to a wonderful group on Ravelry, My Sister's Knitter, and the current KAL is Brooklyn Tweed patterns. Sounds like fun, right? After a whole lot of back and forth - should I join? should I not? - I decided to knit Channel Cardigan. 

The cardigan calls for Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, a worsted weight yarn that is woolen spun and therefore very light and lofty. I've knit with Shelter in the past and liked it but I didn't want to break the bank since my size calls for 14 skeins, so I went to Ravelry and looked at what other knitters used for their cardigans. Cascade 220 is a top yarn in that list so I decided then and there that I would use Cascade 220; a yarn with a ton of color options, great stitch definition, and is a reasonable price. The downside to using Cascade 220 is that the finished sweater will be heavier since it isn't woolen spun, but I'm okay with that. There are already several modifications that I want to make: removing the belt, making sure the shawl collar is big enough to snuggle into, and possibly adding another button hole. I'm also contemplating changing the raglan seamed sleeves to set in sleeves since raglan cardigans always slide off my shoulders. I knit my swatch at knit night on Monday.

Guess what? Perfect stitch and row gauge on the recommended needles. It's a knitting miracle! I used a US #7 (4.5 mm) needle and knit my swatch in moss stitch as listed in the pattern and it's approximately 5 inches by 6 inches. A good general rule is to knit a swatch big enough that when you measure over four inches you don't run into selvedge stitches; your stitch count will be more accurate since those selvedge stitches sometimes behave a little wonky. This project is now ready to cast on!