Knitting Adventures: Mustard Miette

I recently joined a knitting group. There's a couple of us who meet up in a cafe on a Tuesday morning, drink coffee, and knit. Or crochet, or whatever. None of us knew each other before our first meet up, but I always look forward to my Tuesday mornings to get out of my usual routine and just meet with like minded people and do something that I love.

I have been working on my second miette cardigan. It isn't the cream one that I wanted to make when I was knitting my blue miette, but at least I filled that hole in my wardrobe when I sewed up a cream cardigan a couple of months ago.

This version is made from the same yarn as my blue miette, just in a different colour. It is Paton's Jet in alpaca / mohair.

For my blue miette I made quite a few changes to the original pattern, and after wearing it for a while, I decided that the next version would have even more changes made to it. I made it the same extended length in the body and sleeves that I did the first time, but had a few more changes in mind.

So here goes, these are my additional changes:

• Made the largest size. Despite trying to make a cardigan with zero ease, last time my knitting turned out a little too tight, and I still ended up with negative ease. I am a bit more relaxed with my knitting now, so it has loosened up a bit more, but I chose to take the gamble and make this one bigger. I'm much happier with how this fit turned out.
• Knowing that by making the largest size the neckline would sit wider on my shoulders, I also did extra rows on the neck band, and to balance that out, extra rows on the hem and wrist edges. For each of these I did 15 rows.

Note the size of the neckline before doing the rib

• Changed my bust decreases to side seam decreases. (See below) Although I love the look of the dart under the bust, unless you have the cardigan buttoned up all the time, which I don't always do, the top hangs funny and the darts look a little silly. To do this I pretty much followed the decreases used by Gail in her miette knit-along.

• Added a total of 8 extra stitches at the side seams to go over the hips, and to compensate further down, one extra repeat in the pattern. I did this by doing paired increases with a stitch between, knitting into the front and back of stitches in the side seam (see above)
• For the sleeves, I again added 6 additional stitches under the arm instead of two, and then knit 17 rows before doing paired decreases every 5 rows until I had the 48 stitches that I needed before the pattern.
• For all of the ribbing, rather than knitting into the back of stitches in the rib, I did a plain K2, P2 rib.
• Used larger buttons, as the small ones slip out of the buttonholes unless they are all done up. I also dyed the buttons, the same colour as my hand dyed bra, and they are the same buttons that I used for my daughter's quilt, just dyed a different colour.

I was a bit impatient after I finished and decided to use a short cut in blocking. I sprayed the cardigan using my iron, and then just steamed it until the water in the iron ran out. No pinning, no saturated wool. Maybe when it needs cleaning I might take a little more care with pinning it out to shape to make sure it doesn't shrink too much. This way though, it was dry the next day, and ready to wear to show off at knitting group.

And there you have it! No dramas with losing stitches this time. They all behaved for me and none disappeared.

And although I started this way back in January, I have only just finished it, just in time for winter!