I’m pretty pleased with this one. It does make me very happy to be finding such a good use for my handspun, and I’m quite proud of having done so much of the work of this garment my own self. I can’t take credit for the idea—that comes from Rachel from Spincycle Yarns, who wanted to use the charts from The Twigs by Junko Okamoto in a dk weight cardigan. The Twigs has eleventy-seven charts, and Rachel did the hard work of figuring out where they would work in a larger gauge cardigan, and all I did was trail along behind her, doing the same thing. You can see her project here, and listen to her talk about it briefly here. I was, as I’ve said, completely absorbed by this project. I worked it in the round, with six steek stitches at the front, and since most of these handspun yarns are mostly merino, it was a little dodgy—ends flying loose everywhere. I spent a long evening with a sharp darning needle, weaving them in and then I secured all the raw edges underneath a ribbon at the inside. It looks pretty tidy, and it feels somewhat secure. Whew.
I just want to do more of this now. I’ve revived an old work-in-progress, because it, too, is all over colorwork at a fairly large gauge, and whoo! It’s so much fun. This project was started maybe two years ago and then basically abandoned when I had to put it away to make room for something else, and you guys, that is a mistake. If I put it away, it stops existing. I don’t even count it as one of my works-in-progress. It just goes completely away, except for the nagging feeling that I should be either working on it or unraveling it. I thought a few times about unraveling this one, but every time I looked at it, I just really liked it again. Inspiration for this one came from the one and only Kaffe Fassett, and I’m still inspired. I am not putting this away anymore. There is yarn all over the table, and it isn’t going anywhere until this cardigan is finished. It’s a mess. I’m motivated.
