knitted: turquoise blaster cardigan

It feels like an eternity has passed since I finished and photographed this project. May, I think? Anyway, I managed to finish knitting a wooly cardigan just before the start of summer. Smart, eh? I only wore it a couple of times before it got packed away with the winter jumpers. Oh well, not long now until it can come back out from the drawer!

The pattern in question is yet another Andi Satterlund design, the Blaster cardigan. What can I say, I love Andi's cardigan patterns. I've knit 3 now and still have at least 2 more in my knitting queue. They just look so pretty with my fit and flare dresses. Like my previous two cardigans (here and here) I used Jamiesons of Shetland wool (again, what can I say, I love their wool) but this time in the colourway "Caspian". It's a really lovely dusky/dirty shade of turquoise.

Sadly this cardigan wasn't the most fun to knit, but I must stress this was entirely due to tension problems with my knitting, not a reflection on the pattern. My first gauge swatch was absolutely massive so I knit a second one on smaller needles with a tighter tension. It was still a teeny bit bigger than recommended but I calculated from the schematics that my tighter gauge would give me a good fit as I run between sizes with Andi's patterns.

It turns out that it's one thing altering your tension for a small project over a couple of evenings, but another entirely for a longer project. Sadly messing with my natural gauge resulted in irregular tension: it's slack at the beginning around the upper back then gets tighter towards the waist. Thankfully I'm broad shouldered with a small waist so weirdly the tension blunder works in my favour, but it irks me nonetheless. 

My second drama was the first sleeve. I had knitted down to the elbow when I tried the sleeve on and decided that it felt uncomfortably tight. I wasn't sure whether I was still having tension problems or my upper arms are disproportionately large - a bit of both I suspect - but I bit the bullet and frogged the sleeve back to the short rows at the sleeve cap. For my second attempt I knitted double the amount of rounds between the decreases and I'm much happier with the fit. I also knitted the sleeves to full length.

The third drama was the knitting of the buttonholes as I didn’t understand how to do them from the pattern's instructions (they were knitted differently to my previous cardigans.) Then when I figured out the method after watching a KnitPurlHunter video on YouTube (seriously, if you ever have knitting problems, check out her channel) I had to undo them all because my buttons were too large to fit the holes. Doh!


My final gripe is that the top buttonhole wants to bulge upwards. I don’t know whether that’s down to how I picked up the stitches on the buttonband or the fault of the ribbon I sewed onto the reverse to stabilise the buttonband (never done that before, it looks pretty!) I had to sew the top buttonhole vertically as the ribbon was too narrow to sew the hole horizontal to match the knitted hole - perhaps it has stretched the hole out? 

I'm aware I've spent the vast majority of this post complaining, but I genuinely like the finished cardigan and think it looks pretty despite my blunders. I love the simple lace pattern, especially the detail around the waist, and the fit is surprisingly lovely despite my tension woes. I imagine it will get as much wear as my two other Andi Satterlund cardigans.


I'm undecided which of Andi Satterlund's cardigan designs to knit next. Hetty and Anouk are already in my pattern library, although I'm also really tempted by Andi's newer design, Salal. I would need to order wool though (oh, the hardship!) if I want to make another cardigan and it would be a good idea to finish knitting my first pair of socks before I start anything else. I'm ready to turn the heel - exciting!