Intro

I'm still waiting for my yarn to arrive (Cotton Classic in pewter), but figured I'd introduce myself in the meantime. My name is Stephanie and I'm a writer/editor living in Brooklyn. I have a craft and food blog here.

My design process tends to be very product-driven. A lot of the time when I knit other people's patterns, it's because they look like fun to knit or I just really like the look of the thing. But when I start from scratch it's usually because I have something specific (sometimes, like now, very specific) in mind that I want to add to my wardrobe.

For this project, I'm going to make a cardigan. I wear them all the time but my handknit sweaters are overwhelmingly pullovers and don't get worn as much as my storebought cardigans. No good. I tend to wear solid colors, mostly black, grey, blues and purples, and I want a gorgeous cardigan I could throw on over a lot of what I wear normally. The pewter color of Cotton Classic should work with just about everything. I'm a lot more attracted to texture than color and I like projects that mix textures in an unexpected way.

I have a clear mental picture of a cardigan with a lace body and sleeves and a round yoke with graduated cables. The yoke decreases will be done in the cables themselves (probably 8 to 4 to 2 stitches, but I'll see how the numbers work out). I'm thinking that I'll use some kind of decorative braid to separate the sections—the kind you see on fancy-pants mittens—though I might just end up throwing in a garter ridge or two instead. I even have a clear mental picture of the lace pattern I want to use: not too open, enough of a vertical line to be harmonious with the cables, complicated enough to be an interesting foil for the solid yoke. I'm also thinking about having some cables at the wrists before starting the lace to balance it out visually. At this point, I think that I'll probably knit in pieces up to the armholes so I can block the lace well and have the structure of seams, but join them when I get to the yoke and do it in one piece. And I definitely want buttons.

I'll do a sketch that I'll post soon, but I don't draw well at all and really just use them as schematics so I have all of the measurements set ahead of time.

I'm really looking forward to being a part of this and seeing what everyone else is working on. I love the workshop-y nature of a CreateAlong—what a great idea!