WIP: Hooray Cardigan

Just for the record, this project wasn't started recently. I simply cannot knit that fast. I wish I could, but I sadly I can't. I had actually started it back in March during the drive back to the island from the Okanagan. I had mentioned this project in this post and in this post before I had a chance to properly blog about it. Then I promptly forgot to even blog about it at all. I'm not using stash yarn so this project doesn't qualify in my quest for 12 in 2011. Instead I'm using yarn that I had (impulsed) purchased in February and was too impatient to not start knitting with it.

So what am I knitting? The Hooray Cardigan by Veera Välimäki and I'm using the luscious Tosh DK by Madelinetosh. At first I wasn't sure about the colour (for those with inquiring minds, it's Oxblood), I thought it was too dark and that the cables would get lost, but the more I knit the more I decided that I truly did like the colour and that the cables actually popped. Maybe it's the reverse stockinette? Who knows? I for one though, am really loving the marriage between the pattern and the yarn/colour.

I had stopped all knitting on this project at the end of March, when I had mis-crossed cables (again!!) on the front AND the upper back. I dreaded the idea of ripping or tinking back to fix those mistakes and was dead against the idea of embroidering the new cable on, a la Yarn Harlot in this post. Instead, I isolated the areas and dropped those stitches all the way down to the boo-boo'd cables. If I thought it would help the knitting, I would've had a shot of whiskey before diving in but since whiskey would have made me make more mistakes I opted for the quiet alone time that I had when Brett took the Munchkin to his play group.

Once the cables were fixed and I was (finally) back on track, the knitting has been a breeze (knock on wood!) so far. I really love Veera's patterns and find them easy to read and easy to knit. Simplicity is her schtick and her designs really make the yarns and colours the main attraction. I absolutely love every one of her designs. Although I'll admit that I'm a bit biased since I do have a love for all things Finnish and for Finnish design aesthetics. I wish I had paid more attention in my classes and had taken knitting and knitwear classes back when I was a fashion student in Helsinki. If only I was a knitter then...

Ok, I digress.

Back to the cardigan. Knowing that Madelinetosh dyes their yarn in really small batches (I heard they dyed 2-4 skeins at a time) and even seeing the major differences in some of the colourways from one batch to another, I decided to alternate my skeins every two rows. I think it's helping because I did notice that one of my skeins was much more darker and black compared to the others. I know there's no difference in how much yarn is being eaten up by doing this, but I'm now worried that I'm not going to have enough yarn to finish the sleeves the length that I want them to be. The problem with buying hand-dyed yarn is that when you run out of yarn and need another skein, you may possibly run into a colour-matching issue. I think for now I'm going to try knitting faster...maybe I can out-knit the yarn before it runs out...

Don't laugh.