Miette Progress

So, it's been a while. Like ages. January is gone, never to be seen again. I haven't stopped sewing or knitting but there never seems to be any time to photograph and blog about my makes. Baby Arthur and his social life is currently taking up most of my time - swimming lessons, sing and sign, baby groups, discovery play, ... I can't believe he's almost 9 months. But he's such a joy.

I have been managing to carve out some time for sewing, mostly in the evenings and lots and lots of knitting. Whilst I can't always find the energy to tackle a sewing project I can always manage to knit a few rows.

A knitting project that I started a while back is a Miette Cardigan in a lovely pink colour. Whilst I love this pattern by Andi Satterlund, its perhaps not my best choice for a beginners project. I have a bit of a history of starting knitting garments and not finishing them and unfortunately this has become one of these.

You see, I actually managed to knit about half of the cardigan. I knitted the main body and started on one of the set in sleeves. There was nothing wrong with my knitting- except the cardigan didn't fit. After trying it on I realised that it was minuscule on me- like child size!

So where did I go wrong? Turned out that despite knitting a tension square there were a few things wrong with this project. I struggled to get the correct tension with my chosen yarn Cascade 220- I had too many stitches and despite going up a size in the needles it wasn't right in the end. I also knitted the wrong size, I knitted the smallest size, a 32 inch chest, thinking that this would be okay with my small tension but in fact I needed a 36 inch chest for my post baby body.

I did decided to start again! I knitted another tension square using size 6 needles and magically got the right gauge. Hooray! This time I'm knitting the biggest size, a 36 inch chest and I can already see that it is a better fit.

At the moment though, I've shelved this project ... I kind of got a bit bored of it I think but I know I will come back to it at some point!!

Lots more knitting projects to share so watch this space!!