Completely finished and Proud

Last night when I came back from work the first thing I did was to go upstairs to my office and checked if my cardigan was dried! It was a relieved to see that the yarn was obedient enough to stay blocked the way I wanted. I was so worried that for some reason the back was going to be to short, but fortunately was not the case.

I am very pleased with the results of this project. Now when I look at it I think that it was so worth it to be knitting for almost a month, (even my husband was tired of seeing me working on this project) of course including all the fixing and frogging.

I am very pleased with the results of this cardigan, so I decided to go ahead and enter the cardigan to the Prince William County Fair Knitting Competition for the first time! We'll see what happens.

The whole project is raveled here

Techniques I’ve learned while making this pattern

*Mastered short rows wrap and turn. For this I watched a very interesting free video class online from Crafty

*Mastered grafting or sewing

I used mattress stitch (used on sleeves and sides). Great video to learn this technique here 

I also used Kitchener stitch (used on back and part of the sides). Great video to learn this way of seaming here 

Complementary great video to learn how to sew stitches going into different ways here 

It was my first time knitting a cardigan in two separate halves using fingering yarn. When I started I thought it was going to take forever, but it wasn’t that bad. Great for a summer project since the yarn is light to the touch.

Today I can say that I really like the feeling of a fingering cardigan. I can’t wait to this fall to start using it!

I think that fingering projects are my new favorite…mmm… what’s next?

Happy knitting to you and my hugs!

Sabrina

Seaming or Grafting

The reason why I want to dedicate this entry to seaming is because for me it’s one of the hardest techniques to accomplish in my knitting. I could justify myself saying that I hate seaming, or that it’s a waste of time, etc, etc. The truth is that I am NOT good at it. Seaming or grafting is my number one weakness when it comes to knitting. I always tried to knit sweaters from the top down to avoid the seaming, but let’s be honest it’s time to take care of this technique.

These past days I finished knitting the Mythos cardigan. The gauge was perfect (so far, it's blocking); the yarn looks and feels beautiful but my seaming sucks! This cardigan has a lot of grafting (and I mean A LOT) There is even a part on the cardigan where all the stitches go to different directions. I had to re-do the seaming many times, until I got tired and frustrated and decided to put the project away until figuring out how to do it right. I decided to start a researched about seaming or also called grafting knitting.

First, I read all the different ways of seaming. (I already knew this, but I always tried to avoid it). All this information helped me to refresh my memory, but it wasn’t enough. Second, I started looking for videos and paying really close attention to all the details. The videos that I found were OK, but they were not showing what I was actually looking for. Finally, I found the gem video! I could not believe that after doing so much research this video showed exactly what I was looking for. The women in this video explains everything so well, and it’s so easy to understand. The fact that she shows and explains how to seam all the stitches that are going in different directions to me is priceless, because almost none of the videos do. I learned so much with this video; everything makes sense now. I just wanted to share the link with you guys in case you need to see how is done, here it is Link. 

Right now my Mythos is blocking, I can't wait to see the results. I hope it doesn't stretch! 

I will tell you later!

Hugs to you and thank you for being there for me!

Sabrina