Two wee cardigans

After the hat jag came a jag of little cardigans. I grabbed a book off the shelf, sketched the schematic for a 12-month-old size cardigan, made a gauge swatch, and sailed into the math to calculate how many stitches to cast on for the first one.

I cast on 10% fewer stitches and used smaller needles for the garter stitch border so it wouldn’t flare and worked a simple diamond pattern to keep things interesting.

Pattern: own
Yarn: 2.15 skeins Plymouth Yarn Dreambaby DK, 50% acrylic, 50% nylon, color 105
Needles: US size 3 for border and bands, size 5 for body
Size: 12 months
Started 2/10 and finished 2/18/2013

I worked the body back and forth to the armholes, then split the sections and joined new balls of yarn to finish the back and make the fronts, and used a 3-needle bind-off at the shoulders. I found Dreambaby DK to be too sticky, the all-synthetic catching on tiny rough spots on my hands. It didn’t split which made it fine to knit but I don’t like the feel of all-synthetic. Despite this, it turned into a pretty great little cardigan.

I knitted the sleeves separately and sewed them in. Kind of a pain to sew them into a completely finished armhole, but it meant that the little diamonds all faced the same way; had I started the sleeves at the top, they would have looked different from the body diamonds. The buttons were ones I picked up at Stitches West a while ago and fit this project perfectly.

The possibilities of diagonals captured my interest next, so another gauge swatch and a bit of math and knitting later, a purple sweater appeared:

Pattern: own
Yarn: 2.75 skeins Valley Yarns Superwash DK, 100% superwash merino wool, color 24
Needles: US size 3 for ribbing, size 5 for body
Size: 12 months
Started 3/1 and finished 4/3/2013

The yarn is lovely to work with, soft, didn’t split, felt comfortable in my hands. Where the diagonal lines met at the sides of the body and edges of the sleeves, I worked 2 stitches in plain stockinette. I picked up the sleeves around the armholes and knit them downward.

Superwash DK’s a great deal: $16 for this project! The buttons’ sheep look a little crazy but they went with the yarn better than any others I found:

More little cardigans to follow.