I'm not going to lie, it's taken me ages to finish this project. Now that it's done it looks so cute I wish I had just cracked on and finished it earlier. The colour combination was part inspired by the beautiful and colourful Swedish knitwear designers Millamia, and part stash busting some of my 'didn't quite get round to it' smaller projects. You know the ones: a few balls to make a cardigan for a four year old, but opps they've grown so big now!
The two shades of blue are Naturally Alpaca DK - 90% alpaca and 10% merino wool - a New Zealand made yarn. The mottled pink is a Twilleys of Stanford yarn called Freedom Spirit that's made in England. I usually always buys New Zealand made yarn, but couldn't resist it sitting in the sale bin at Knit World.
I used the cardigan pattern from this Patons book. I've made this pattern very successfully a number of times. Because our Little Miss is a long bean, I always increase the length of the body by 5cm and the length of the sleeve by about 3cm.
The strip sequence I used is:
5 rows sky blue,
1 row pink,
2 rows navy,
1 row pink,
5 rows sky blue,
1 row navy,
4 rows pink,
1 row navy,
and repeat!
The overall pattern really works well because the mottled pink yarn breaks up the stripe so it doesn't look so arbitrary or obvious.
I let our Little Miss choose the cardigan colours from my stash. She has got so opinionated about her clothes these day that it's not worth the risk of having her tell me that she's 'not that keen on that one' once I've spend all that time knitting. I really hate to think what teenage years are going to be like!
Happy knitting xx
This one has been a long time in the making. Good thing I made a big size. Despite declaring she didn't like green, Little Miss almost 5 is now quite taken by her new cardigan. I think the proportion of pink was enough to win her over.
The pattern I used is a hybrid. The main pattern is a Patons one from book 1253. But the colours and stripes are inspired by Sweden's Millamia designs. There combinations of colours, patterns and stripes is always striking: especially the Bright Young Things book (HCR Publishing, 2009). Unfortunately Millamia is all knitted on 3.25mm needles; all those extra stitches and rows take extra time that I don't ever seem to have.
I used this cardigan pattern in a size 6. It is knitted in double knit 8 ply on 4mm needles. The bands were knitted in a 2/2 rib on 3.25mm needles. As such, I changed the front band by casting the stitches directly onto the front and knitting 8 rows of 2/2 rib instead of knitting the band as a strip and sewing it on.
I made the body of the garment about 2 cm longer to compensate for out long bean's extra height.
I used a combination of yarns: The variegated pink and green yarn are Utiku from The Wool Company. The Green yarn is a Shephard possum and wool blend, and the bands are Shephard lamb's wool. All are 8 ply and hand wash only.
The back of the cardigan is knitted as a repeated sequence of 10 rows green followed by 6 rows pink variegated. The sleeves are worked in 2 row stripes of the green and pink. The left front is all pink variegated and the right front is all green. Little Miss chose her own mixture of buttons from the stash she has been gradually whisking away from my craft draw.
Our happy little girl wearing her new cardy. I wanted her to put a 'good dress' on to model it. She insisted on this vintage shopped number. She would wear everyday of the week if she could.
