{"id":149,"date":"2007-06-21T22:52:36","date_gmt":"2007-06-22T05:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/?p=149"},"modified":"2007-06-21T22:52:36","modified_gmt":"2007-06-22T05:52:36","slug":"ballet-wrap-cardigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/2007\/06\/21\/ballet-wrap-cardigan\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballet Wrap Cardigan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.interweaveknits.com\/preview\/2005_winter.asp\">Winter 2005<\/a> issue of Interweave Knits magazine; pattern by Katy Ryan.<br \/>\nYarn: Katia Tundra, 50% wool \/ 40% acrylic \/ 10% viscose<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Ballet Wrap Front\" title=\"Ballet Wrap Front\" src=\"http:\/\/sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/ImageUploads\/BalletWrap_Front.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In honor of the solstice (first day of yay, summer!) I&#8217;m finally posting this finished project, my first full-size sweater. I actually finished it awhile back, in April I think, and it has been cool enough to wear it a few times. It&#8217;s quite warm and cozy so I&#8217;ll be happy to have it come winter.<\/p>\n<p>I think the thing I am most pleased about with this sweater is how the yarn looks, knitted up. It&#8217;s multicolored in a sort of heathery way, and space-dyed on very, very long repeats. So the bottom edge of a sleeve starts out with the yarn as a blend of aqua, purple, and gray; and then it very gradually changes to a mix of teal, pink, and brown. It was kind of a step out of my comfort zone to choose a purple\/pinky yarn since those generally aren&#8217;t the colors I choose &#8211; but I figured with all those base colors this sweater would match a lot of things, whether warm neutrals, cool neutrals, denim&#8230; even pink. Though I don&#8217;t own many pink things, it matches my favorite jeans quite nicely!<\/p>\n<p>The thing I am least satisfied with is the upper sleeve area. Those came out a little bulky, and my shoulders are somewhat broad for my overall size and shape anyway, so I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s one of those things where I notice it because it&#8217;s a sensitive figure-area for me. For the next sweater I knit, I will probably go for a raglan-style sleeve instead of set-in.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure if this had an impact on the sleeve issue, but I knit a <strong>larger size<\/strong> at a <strong>smaller gauge<\/strong>. That took some figuring, and maybe I miscalculated somewhere. But I found this trick worked out pretty well so I definitely won&#8217;t hesitate to try it again, maybe just not with a design with set-in sleeves. Another change that I made to the pattern was working the top few inches of the back in ribbing. I was afraid that just binding off stockinette would make the back neckline look really unfinished (and it would most likely curl.) Also I used short-row shaping instead of stepped bind-off, to avoid a jaggedy effect in that same area; and that allowed me to use 3-needle bind off as the shoulder seams. (I avoid seaming whenever I can.) So that all worked out well. The straps were very long, but I decided to leave them that way and wear them criss-crossed in front and tied in back (to avoid the belly-bow look. I am not a teddy bear.) Here&#8217;s the back view:<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"http:\/\/sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/ImageUploads\/BalletWrap_Back.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Winter 2005 issue of Interweave Knits magazine; pattern by Katy Ryan. Yarn: Katia Tundra, 50% wool \/ 40% <span class=\"more-text\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}