I thoroughly enjoyed making the Acer Cardigan designed by Amy Christoffers. With lovely yarnover and cable motifs, it kept my interest. As I learn nifty little tricks to add polish to my knitting, I love to incorporate them into knitting sweaters.
“Acer” knit up fairly quickly using worsted weight yarn. I chose Rowan’s Hemp Tweed in the teal color. The yarn’s tweedy-ness is subtle enough to enhance, rather than detract from, the stitch pattern. And while some tweed yarns feel like a bale of hay, Hemp Tweed has a nice hand and the sweater is just soft enough that I can wear it next to skin.
Since I’ve become so enamored with my fusion of Custom Fit and the kind of shaping used by Ysolda Teague in her Blank Canvas sweater pattern, I used my “hippy shaping” to create just the right fit for my Acer Cardigan. I created hourglass shaping on the front and back of the sweater, to give the illusion of an hourglass figure which my actual body certainly does not have. Then I forced the extra hip shaping to the sides of the sweater. It makes the hip shaping appear less severe.
I also altered the sweater by adding some length and adding short rows to the upper back. I used decreases in the corners where the back shoulder stitches meet the bound-off back to make the neck band lie flat. I explained this technique in detail in my blog post for the Drumlin sweater.
A new-to-me idea that I tried in setting in the sleeve was to very loosely sew the underarm seam with dental floss as a guide. It’s much easier to pull out errant dental floss than it is yarn if the sleeve stitches don’t line up with the body stitches. It was so easy to follow the floss with the seaming yarn – the columns of stitches lined up perfectly with each other!
Typically, when I wear my hand-knit sweaters buttoned up, the buttons pull out toward the outer edge of the buttonhole band, making them look off-center. A little trick I used on this sweater was to cheat the buttonhole one stitch toward the body of the sweater. If you look closely, you can see that the buttonhole is just a bit closer to the inside edge of the band. When buttoned, the button appears perfectly centered.
I just love to learn little techniques that add up to a sweater that I enjoy wearing!
Resources:
If you’re not already a member of TKGA, I highly recommend it. I love Arenda Holladay’s articles on seaming, in the members-only section. I use her “Seams Part 3” article as a reminder every time I seam a sweater.