Completed: The Hetty Cardigan

Omg, when was the last time I posted a completed knitting project? It’s been far too long.

I guess we can make up for it now! Everyone, meet Hetty 🙂

Hetty is a sweet, cropped cardigan knit entirely in lace, which makes it perfect for warmer spring/summer months. The cardigan is knit seamlessly from the top-down, which means there’s no seaming after you’ve finished the knitting – just a block and buttons and it’s ready-to-wear! I really prefer these seamless top-down (and occasionally bottom-up) patterns, as the whole seaming thing just really puts me off haha.

As you can see, I went the copycat route and basically copied Andi verbatim with my pretty spring green yarn. Both the pattern and the yarn were actually gifted to me by reader/Ravelry follower, Julia. I was planning on joining the Hetty Knit Along when I received these goodies (which means I’ve been sitting on this pattern+yarn for… almost a year now, eep!), but other projects got in the way and I wasn’t actually able to start this until March. Oh well! Better late than never 🙂

So… let’s talk about this pattern a little. Theoretically, this is a fairly simple pattern with VERY easy lace work. The open lace work, the cropped length, and the short(ish) sleeves mean that this should be a pretty quick knit. For me, I did struggle a lot with getting the lace work to properly match up. This is because the side seams are knitted in stockinette, so that the decreases can fit. Since the stockinette count can change from row to row, I had a hard time remembering *where* to start my lacework pattern, and thus a lot of it did not line up. I ripped out a significant amount of this sweater – including the entire back about four times (I think, I lost count because it was just too depressing haha), because I hated how the lacework wasn’t lining up. Despite all this ripping out, I still got the sweater finished in about two and a half months. I can only manage to knit a couple of hours a week at this point, so that’s pretty freaking fast!

Here is my biggest tip regarding that damn lacework – once you start getting to stockinette territory, place a marker at the beginning of one of the lacework repeats. Doesn’t matter which one (although I’d recommend one that is a couple repeats away from where the stockinette begins) – this will just give you a visual indication of where a lace repeat needs to START, and from there you can count back to the beginning and see how many lace repeats will fit/need to be turned into stockinette. I hope this makes sense! It’s kind of hard to tell where the repeats start when you’re in the middle of a row, and I’m pretty fucking awful at tell where patterns start when I’m looking at them vertically, so this was the only way I could keep the lace pattern consistent and stacked correctly. I also only figured this out one I got to the second sleeve, hence all my ripping out. Oh well – learn from my mistakes, ok? 🙂

Here you can sort of see the lace repeat as it turns into stockinette. Very clever for the way this is constructed, as you don’t have to worry about messing up the lace with additional decreases, but like I said – it can totally get confusing. Use those stitch markers!

Also, that “easy to memorize” lace pattern was VERY hard for me to memorize! I did finally get the hang of it… again, about halfway through the second sleeve. Haha! Oh well!

Despite my big giant lace-induced headache, this was a fun sweater to knit up. I really love the open lace design and I’ve already gotten quite a bit of wear out of it – the light, open lace makes this so nice to wear in chilly air conditioned buildings, and the color is nice and summery 🙂

I used Cascade 220 yarn (my favorite! ♥) to knit this, and I made the size Small. Based on my gauge swatch, I was able to get gauge with size 6 needles (seems about right for me + worsted weight yarn). Fair warning – this sweater is pretty tiny while it’s being knitted. I can’t even tell you how many people asked me who’s baby I was knitting a sweater for haha (Answer: NO BABIES! Are you fucking KIDDING me?? haha!). But as you can see, it blocked out very nicely! I soaked this guy in warm water and squished it around on a towel until the lace opened up and the size was accurate for my body. I just love how it turned out!

Oh, and I’m wearing my navy Hollyburn in these photos, fyi. Thought they kind of showed the skirt better than the photos in the last post! Plus, I love combination of these two colors 🙂

I promise I did take photos of the sweater laid out in all it’s fully glory, but Flickr REFUSED to believe that the files were actual photo files. So… have some close-ups, I guess?

Vintage buttons + petersham at the button band! I used neon yellow petersham because that’s what I had on hand, and I think it looks really pretty with the green 🙂

Speaking of Petersham, I did take photos of the process of attaching it to the button band, so keep an eye on this space next week for a TUTORIAL! Woohoo! I’ve had loads of people ask how I attach the petersham, so hopefully this will be helpful to ya 🙂

Love looking at close-ups of handknits 🙂

Sooo, there ya go! Pretty Hetty, just in time for… summer 😉 Now to finish my Sunshine yellow Myrna for the OAL (which is coming along FAST – almost done with the first sleeve!). Full Ravelry notes on Hetty can be found here.

Tags: Andi Satterlund, cardigan, completed, hetty, knit, knitting, lace, Untangling Knots, wool, yarn