We had our first thunderstorm of the season the other day, and everything is slowly waking up. I mean everything in this “on the way home” photo still looks dried and crusty, but the damp layered landscape really matched the yarn I’ve been using in a cardigan.
This cardigan specifically, the Bonnie cardigan. I making mine a Brown Bonnie Boy for my husband.
Yarn is a deep stash pull, from Cascade, called Rustic. It’s a 80% wool / 20% Linen blend in the colorway walnut.
..Not changing a whole lot from the pattern as written..
I’m adding around 8” to the body, for a length from underarm of 17”, before adding the hem. Also I’m not splitting the hem, but did add the decorative horizontal chain (the same one you see around the cuffs just before the ribbing). I stopped decreasing the sleeves after the first set, for a little more ease through the forearm, adding some extra length there too. As I’ve said before, sleeve island on a men’s cardigan is rough, yeah, I’m a slow knittter, but can we just say gorilla arms ..sheesh.
Oh as usual, I’m also flipping the button band so the buttons are on the right/ buttonholes left (traditional menswear), with the added body length my buttonhole total jumped to 9. I couldn’t get the one row buttoneholes described in the pattern to look nice or open up very much, so I ended up working a regular buttonhole instead.
..ok maybe I changed a fair bit..
I don’t do much extra when sewing on buttons, sometimes all you need is a smaller button or a little pad of wool felt on the reverse, to keep the button stable and secure, sometimes not even that. I always use sturdy thread and occasionally will sew over that with the matching yarn without any issue.
I made the size 7 (55″ chest), total yards used 1372. It wasn’t until I was completely done and blocking it that I noticed this yarn had subtle stripes in the nicest Freddy Krueger goes to college kind of way.
These are here because they too match that layered “on the way home” landscape.
Or in a more disgusting and again slightly disturbing Freddy Krueger-ey kind of way, carved bone, or a tooth, or beefy gristle with their dirty brown opalescent transparency.
It’s actually Jupiter (the planet) that’s what the color swirl was supposedly inspired by ..maybe it’s both.. a little bit cosmic and a little bit grandma’s Sunday pot roast.
chalklegs.com 