FO: Graffiti Bridge

Happy Monday! Can I say I didn’t expect all of the conversation last week on my post about what motivates my knittingmy post about what motivates my knitting! It’s great to hear that I am not alone in being a knitting hermit. LOL Hermits unite…virtually! I loved the conversation it sparked and hopefully we do more of that. I also heard a few folks say they’re also interested in my yarn storage and stash so I’ll try to work on more posts exploring what my knitting life is like. Today I’m sharing a finished object that flew off my needles because I loved this yarn, Madelinetosh DK Twist in Clap Your Hands. Remember I said rainbows are my neutral and this is an ultimate neutral cardigan for me, I named it Under the Graffiti Bridge after that Prince movie and album.

The pattern is the Off-Rib cardigan, one I’ve had in my queue forever but never figured out what yarn to use. It calls for worsted weight but I ended up substituting it out for dk weight on larger needles to make a lighter sweater. I’m so glad I did it.

I also decided instead of doing a fitted cropped sleeve to bell the sleeves out (I simply replaced all the decreases with increases and this is what you get). Bell sleeves are a bit on trend right now and I haven’t knit a single sweater yet with a bell sleeve – which is a favorite of mine despite being a pain to fit into a jacket.

My hope is that by knitting this with a dk weight yarn to create a lighter fabric plus the bell sleeves I’ll be able to wear this into the spring almost as a light jacket.

For the closures I went with small lucite toggle buttons so that they didn’t compete with the pattern the yarn made. I think it was the best choice. I also had to make crochet chains to make the loops and sew them to the inside of the cardigan, which was something new for me. I’ve got to tighten the bottom loop a bit but otherwise I love the fun opening and asymmetry to the shape of the cardigan. I wore this to brunch on Sunday and my husband even complimented it on me, he said he liked how it was different that a normal cardigan.

I love this cardigan and am already plotting out making it in a worsted weight too just to see the difference – but that will have to wait! So I modified this pattern a bit, what types of modifications do you tend to make when knitting?