Flarkin is going to tell you all about her Blackberry cardigan in the coming weeks. I can’t wait, since this cardigan has been in my favorites for quite awhile and the Junebug colorway makes me swoon! Our first back of giveaway winners is here and our last batch of giveaway winners (with the grand prize winner) will be announced at 3:30p est, so check back! – Lauria
While my husband and co-workers call me Cris, you can find me on Ravelry as Flarkin. That is my smiling face modeling the Amalthea cowl in the Moonshine pattern booklet.
I first encountered Moonshine while visiting the farm last winter. Susan had some sample skeins leftover from the designing and test knitting phases of the Spring 2013 collection hidden in a closet in her office. I instantly fell in love with the yarn’s soft fibers and natural sheen, and the vibrant, jewel-toned colorways of the collection really spoke to me. I knew was the perfect yarn to make the Blackberry Cabled Cardigan, a pattern that has been sitting in my Ravelry queue since before I learned to knit.
While I admired pretty much every single one of the Moonshine colorways, Junebug stole my heart. A deep teal green with heathered flecks in a lighter shade, Junebug has great depth and shine.
Now I am not normally much of a swatcher. I prefer to get straight to the knitting, but the fitted shape of this cardigan made obtaining an accurate size very necessary. So, I knit a swatch AND blocked it. (Yay me !) As you can see, while Junebug is one of the darker colorways, the cables and texture of the cardigan still really pop, and the yarn glows in sunlight.
Now, Moonshine is a worsted weight yarn, and I stitched my swatch on size 8 (5.0 mm) needles. However, the Blackberry Cabled Cardigan pattern was written for a DK weight yarn on size 7s (4.5mm). While I was happy with the my gauge and the resulting fabric, after measuring my swatch, it was apparent I faced a significant sizing issue. The pattern calls for a swatch done in the cable stitch (28 stitches and 32 rows) to measure 4 inches. My swatch measured 5 inches, a full inch larger than the recommended gauge.
Rather than stitching on a smaller needle and compromising the gauge and the weight of the fabric, I opted to do some math.
To accommodate my measurements, normally I would have stitched the Large size (42 inch bust). However, if I knit the Large size at my too-big gauge, I would have ended up with a too-big sweater. (An extra inch every four inches would result in a sweater with a bust of a little over 52 inches.) My solution is to knit a smaller size, relying on my too-big gauge to size the sweater up for me.
Because I am gaining an extra inch every four inches of stitching, I am knitting the Small size. While this size would normally fit a 34 inch bust, at my gauge will add an extra 8-ish inches to the bust, resulting in a bust of approximately 42 inches.
Or so I hope.
Cris lives in bucolic western Kentucky with her husband, two children, and a menagerie of assorted four-legged creatures. She spends her days as a librarian and her nights dreaming of a small plot of land where she could raise a few chickens. She be found on Ravelry as Flarkin.
Lisa! Lisa, I’m so glad that you’re out of the ICU and hope that you’re doing much better now. I remember that and I can’t believe that a whole year has gone by!
