Petite Knit Sunday Cardigan – All You Knit Is Love K2Tog yarn 

This Sunday Cardigan by Petite Knit was my third knitting project, and I made it in yarn from Barcelona yarn shop All You Knit Is Love. For every garment, I’m trying out a bunch of different techniques or construction because I find so much joy in learning and trying new things. (aside: I didn’t blog yet about the first two knits, but you’ll be seeing more knitting for sure! I’m really trying to diversify my crafting activities this year, read about 2022 plans here) .

The cardigan is full of mistakes – this blog post shows you warts and all. But is still nicely wearable so I guess that’s that. Here’s my rundown, plus some tips to avoid the rookie errors that I did. 

The K2Tog yarn by All You Knit Is Love 

A special blend made for the lovely store All You Knit Is Love. The shop itself is in a gorgeous old building in a touristic area of Barcelona, the staff are really nice and I enjoyed browsing. I’ll be back for sure next time. Here’s a tiny glimpse of the outside. Can you tell it was a beautiful sunny day, and possibly the best day I had on holidays in 2021.

The yarn is called K2tog and is bulky, 100g = 105m. I bought it because it was a blend made especially for the shop. I was very interested in the 30% milk, and it was souvenir shopping! A little google research indicates that milk fibre is produced in a similar fashion to viscose. More on this another day and I might even contact the store to see if they want to talk to me about it.

Viscose has drape so it follows that the milk gave the yarn drape. It probably explains why, after blocking, the finished cardigan lost a lot of bounce and became quite floppy. Note: I am wholly inexperienced with yarns / knitting so everything is an experiment at this point! I had checked my gauge after blocking the swatch and I checked it again on the finished garment and it was correct. So it must have been just the drape.

Pattern: Petite Knit Sunday Cardigan 

Pattern wise this was fairly straightforward. I would say pretty beginner-friendly if you’ve only got a project or two under your belt. My knitty friend tells me that Petite Knit doesn’t always have crystal clear instructions. That helped me feel a bit better about running into any roadblocks (cue: googling or phone a friend). 

Verdict 

Success! I made a Petite Knit Sunday Cardigan! It fits! It’s nice! 

Now let’s be realistic and move onto the less good things about my knitting.

• I didn’t even know that it was possible that an M1 can give you a hole if your technique isn’t good. There were a lot of M1s and there were a LOT of repairs … look at this photo below. After a ton of repairs, there was no way I was weaving in all those ends. So I just tied it off, snipped and applied fraycheck to the knots.
• Nor did I understand that there are such things as twisted stitches. Or that there are big differences between knitting through the back loop and the front loop. 
• The front edges are sagging a bit. Is it the weight of the yarn? Or much drape in the yarn? Not sure, but I did see that Ami made hers with an i-cord on the button placet – see her post here – and her cardigan has has a lot more body than mine, and the front is sitting really nicely.

Other observations & personal preferences

• Bulky neckband: I’m not a fan in general of the folded over neckband, it creates a lot of bulk (if you follow my sewing you’ll know that bulky edges are my nemesis!)… I’ll be sticking to single layer neckband in future.
• Needle size: Knitting on 8mm was not ergonomic for my hands, but I couldn’t get gauge with the All You Knit Is Love K2tog yarn using anything smaller. Everyone has different tensions; I think I’m a tight knitter as I need to up the needle size on just about every swatch I’ve ever made.
• Buttonholes: are made at the end instead of being knitted in. This makes it a bit more challenging to put in bigger buttons, if you’re expected to push your finger between the yarn to make a hole. I know you can plan holes in your knitting eg with yarnovers so I’d probably do this in future if there’s something to be made with buttons.
• Extra long sleeves: were really not necessary for me. I have no idea how long mine ended up, I just tried it on and stopped when I felt like it was enough. Maybe I would have liked the extra long sleeves more if I had made the ribbing a bit tighter.

Tutorial list for the Petite Knit Sunday cardigan

In order of construction, here are the tutorials I followed and a couple I *should* have followed, had I known at the time that they existed.

1. Cast on for neckband ribbing “Alternate cable cast on” – Sheep & Stitch

Note: if you’re folding over the neckband and sewing it down I don’t think it matters what cast on your use to begin with.

2. M1R and M1L without holes – Yarn Sub.

3. Casting on underarm stitches – Suzann Bryan

4. Picking up stitches for the sleeve (no holes under the arms!) – Suzann Bryan 

5. Tubular or Italian cast off for ribbing – Suzann Bryan – I used this for the ribbing

To fix the jog at the end if you are doing a hem band or cuff in the round, Suzann has a video for that too. Start watching from 10:52 on how to finish.

A note about bind offs

Note: I like to use Italian more than the tubular. In both cases, you need to cast off using a tapestry needle. But the tubular requires knitting 4 additional setup rows which is a total faff and I don’t feel it makes enough difference for me to warrant doing it. See the comparison below in my sleeve cuffs. The tubular feels ever slightly more squishy, but on flat pic it is not noticeable.

6. In pattern cast off for ribbing – Suzann Bryan – a simpler way than the Italian cast off that works just fine, but I found this is a little less stretchy. So maybe better for sleeve cuffs, but less good for hembands if you have a sweater that you need to get over your body.

And to finish, a couple more pics. Despite the less successful parts of this make, I think it is safe to say that knitting is firmly in my “regular” hobby list and I’m determined to get better at it!

Till next time

Kate