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Last spring I was charmed by my friend Leslie's lacey cardigan. She has knit it in many colors and yarns and I wanted a sweater just like hers. She kindly gave me a copy of the pattern and I went off to my favorite local yarn shop where I purchased Plymouth Yarn's Jeannee in cotton and, ick, acrylic. I never knit with acrylic, but when I felt a sample sweater knit with this I hoped that I wouldn't be sorry and purchased enough for the sweater in a lovely coral.
One of the reasons this sweater was such a pleasure to knit is that it has so many different techniques in it. The hem is a nice swingy lace, which gave me no end of trouble. My main downfall is reading and following directions. I knit and reknit that border and the first few inches of the back at least 3 times before calling Leslie, in a panic, because the back was getting wider and wider as I knit from the lace edge. It turns out that I neglected to read the part about making a substantial decrease after the border. Well, once I did that, the sweater became the proper width. I could have saved myself quite a bit of knitting had I read the directions more thoroughly.
In addition to the lace hem, this sweater has eyelet detail on both the front and the back that travels from the hem. Then, at the yoke you get to knit a basketweave pattern as you decrease for the raglan sleeves and the neck edge. When I got bored with one part of the sweater, another part began so there was always something different to knit. Finally, in a departure from the pattern I crocheted around the neck and front to finish off the sweater. Assembling the sweater went smoothly, and then I faced the challenge of finding the right buttons.
Leslie, the dear that she is, mailed me a box of buttons that she thought would look good with the sweater. There were so many to choose from my head began to spin. As I unwrapped the buttons each one was more beautiful than the others. Any one of the buttons would have worked, but I finally chose a simple glass button, thinking that I could then wear the sweater with anything from jeans to a nice skirt.
The finished project - thanks to Leslie.
The yarn, which I wondered about because of the acrylic is fine. It actually seems to be holding its shape better than plain cotton and it certainly feels good.