Finished: Shalom

Woot woot!! My third finished project of the year and my first for the 12 in 2011 goal. How happy am I? Even more so happy when I found out that I was being a total meat head and actually did have Shalom queued up in my Ravelry queue! While searching for patterns that I could use with the bulky yarn that I was going to use for Juliet, I didn't think I had any suitable patterns in my Ravelry queue so I had gone straight to the pattern database. The other day I decided to go through all my queued patterns (there were over 300!!) to delete the ones that I was no longer interested in and lo and behold, Shalom was #36 in my queue!! So not only is this project legitimate for the 12 in 2011 goal, but it can also count towards one of my 101 goals, which was to knit 10 items from my Ravelry queue. Gotta love two-fers!

There's really not much more to say about this project than I already have in the first post, other than the fact that it had knit up pretty darn fast. The yoke took probably a day to knit, which completely took me by surprise as I thought with all the twisted stitches that it would drag on for a while. I'm still kicking myself in the butt for not adding the extra 2 button holes, but that's ok. I had a hard time finding the right size buttons in my stash to use. The buttons that I thought would work had turned out to be way too big and would have looked out of place on the garment. I had always envisioned this cardigan to have wooden buttons (then again, I always want wooden buttons on everything!), and was a tad shocked that my wooden button collection has dwindled down to practically nothing. Luckily I had a few buttons left over from the Simple & SweetGeorgia Pullover that actually fits. I'm now contemplating on taking off the button and just using a shawl pin for the closure...I just need to get a shawl pin.

The designer forewarned knitters in the pattern that the cardigan was originally made for a really tall person and that knitters should adjust the length accordingly to suit the wearer. I was a little worried that it would come out too long for me, but the beauty in knitting a top-down garment is that you can try it on as you go. So in the end had omitted only 2 rows before increasing and I think the length is perfect. There's been a few projects in the past that could have used a few extra inches to the length, and now I'm slightly paranoid about making things too short.

The only things I would change about this project if I were to knit it again would be to either add more stitches to the fronts so that it wouldn't gape open so much and would provide more coverage, or to not do the decreases or increases all together. I would also bind off less stitches for the arms. I find that the armholes are too big and stretch even wider when you try to pull the yoke close more than it's suppose to. Then again, I would also add sleeves so the gaping armholes wouldn't be an issue. I didn't think I would have enough yarn to do sleeves but halfway knitting the garter hem I realized that I hadn't even broken into the 5 hank and still had just a little less than half a hank left over from the 4th. I hate having left over yarn, especially random skeins that you can't do anything with, but I'm feeling too lazy to rip out the binding and adding the sleeves. Besides, the first time I wore this cardigan I was boiling hot after half an hour. I'm not sure if that's because of the bulky wool or the tiny amount of alpaca that's mixed in, or both. Since winter isn't about to loosen its' grip on the weather around these parts, I'm just happy that I'll be able to have the chance to wear this a few times before it has to go into storage waiting for the day when colder weather reappears!

Cardigan details:
Pattern: Shalom Cardigan by Meghan McFarlane
Yarn: Cadena by Knit Picks (I used almost 4 hanks)
Colour: Mist
Needles: Knit Picks Harmony Wood Interchangeable in 6.5mm (US 10 1/2)
Ravelry Link: MisoCraftyKnits Not a Juliet Shalom Cardigan