Complete: My First Sweater!

Fair warning: There are a lot of pictures in this post. Can you blame me? I’m so proud of my little wool baby!

I guess there’s not much more to say, since I’ve documented most of the progress here on the ol’ blog. So just a recap, for anyone who is new –
The pattern is the Agatha Cardigan by Andi Satterlund. I knit a size Small with no alterations – for the record, my bust/waist is 36/26.5 and the negative ease in this sweater fits perfectly. I did have to size down my needles to a 5 to get gauge. The yarn is Cascade 220, a worsted weight, and I used about 3 1/2 skeins.

This sweater is knit top-down, so there wasn’t any seaming to deal with when I finished. I did have to knit the sleeves in the round, which was an interesting learning experience (just don’t look at all the little mistakes I made hahaha). I blocked the shit out of it (especially the sleeves) and it definitely made a huge difference in the fit. As far as I’m concerned, the fit is perfect! Yay!

The only change I made was to stabilize the back of the button bands with petersham ribbon. This wasn’t called for in the pattern, but those bands are stretchy as hell & I didn’t want them to get all stretched out over time (especially since I rarely wear my cardigans un-buttoned). I didn’t follow any specific instructions for this, just hand-sewed the petersham down with teeny tiny stitches & sewed around the button holes to keep it from unraveling. I also used much smaller buttons – the pattern calls for 3/4″, but I could only squeeze 1/2″ buttons in those things.

I learned a LOT making this sweater! Short rows, fairly intricate lace work, knitting in the round with double-pointed needles, reading a pattern, picking up stitches, different ways to cast on… I can’t even remember all of it ahah. One thing I should mention is that this sweater doesn’t have any cables – it kind of looks like it does, but that’s just lace work & ribbing. I do want to learn how to do cables, though! They look like fun!

Extra extra special thanks to both Mika (for knitting along with me & answering all my frantic questions!) and Sarah (for teaching me how to knit in the first place!). I couldn’t have done it without these two fine ladies!

You know what’s really neat? According to my Ravelry notes (psst! Add me if you wanna!), I started this sweater on 1/17… and ended on 4/17. So it took me exactly 3 months! I don’t think that’s too bad, considering I mostly knitted for an hour a day on my lunch break 🙂

Here’s the petersham! I got a pretty good match, color-wise 🙂 I know traditionally, the ribbon goes on top of the button band, but I liked the way the ribbing looked so I sewed it to the back.

See?

The button holes are kind of terrible looking, sorry, but I did the best I could. They look good from the front, though!

Side decreases

Lower arm shaping

Whew! I think that’s enough knitting excitement for one day! I wish I could tell y’all that I was gearing up to tackle another big knitting project, but unfortunately I had to spend my knitting budget at the pharmacy this month (that stupid cough! ARGH.) 😦 So maybe next month! I really want to knit the Miette. Andi has the best patterns, srsly. Love her stuff.

Thanks for letting me indulge, you guys!

😀

Tags: Agatha sweater, completed, hot damn this is my jam, knitting