Planning and Design

Back in my Splatoon bootlegging days, I bought ribbed knit fabric to make both the Green and Orange Cardigans but only made the green one. To be honest, the fabric wasn’t very nice (too scratchy…), so the orange fabric sat in my stash for a long time (until beginning of Splatoon 3) before I finally gave it away. Then of course afterwards I decided that I did actually want an orange cardigan 😅

Since I had to buy materials again, I figured this was a good chance to actually knit the cardigan. Previously, I bought wide ribbed fabric because I didn’t have the confidence to knit it. That was well before I found out about chunky wool. Ever since I got my Loopy Mango book, the number one item I wanted to make was the Her Cardigan. So the stars were all aligning for this project 🤣

Loopy Mango didn’t have the colours I wanted, but in any case I was keen to use Wool And The Gang’s Heal the Wool range. Not only is it recycled offcuts, but it’s softer than their usual Crazy Sexy Wool. Luckily they had exactly the orange I was after! I wouldn’t have minded a darker brown, but to me texture matching is more important than colour matching so I was happy to compromise.

I did end up buying the Her Cardigan pattern as the book doesn’t include different sizing and comparing the instructions to what was on the website, it looked like the book version was closer to a large. Given the style is already oversized, I thought it would be better to go smaller and do a medium. I did wait for a half price though, since I wasn’t too happy about buying something I felt I kinda already owned 🙃

For buttons I grabbed the most suitable from my stash. No idea where they came from, I don’t remember buying them…

Materials

• Pattern
  • Her Cardigan (Loopy Mango)
• Wool
  • Heal the Wool Sunset Orange x6 (Wool And The Gang)
  • Heal the Wool Sunset Fox Brown x1 (Wool And The Gang)
• Buttons
  • Wooden Look Large Buttons (source unknown)
• Thread
  • DMC Cotton 720

Construction

Knitting this was fun! It felt relaxing and came together quite quickly.

I did have to restart the sleeves because I started them the wrong way (garter was showing on the right side). I made notes for next time.

And then I had to do some calculations to get the most out of what I had left of the brown wool 😅 I didn’t realise the hems would require so much 😣 I was tossing up between two skinny stripes or one large one and figured that switching between colours would waste yarn so did one stripe only. It probably actually worked out this way since the shoulders are so dropped, having two large stripes like I originally planned would have been a bit weird proportionately.

Then the troubles arose. Firstly, I didn’t have a long enough circular needle for the neckband. Luckily it was near to my birthday and my mum offered to cover the cost 🤣 but I did still have to wait for it to arrive.

Then, when I started picking up stitches for the neckband, the stitches felt so tight ☹️ It was a real workout doing that first row of stitches 😵 I sweae my blood sugars dropped from the exertion 😳 I dunno what I did wrong…next time I might look it up…

I did look up some things for the neckband though. Firstly I was worried about how to pick up stitches evenly. The second thing was I wasn’t sure which side to start on given my issues with the sleeves.

Then the next (small) hurdle: how to sew the buttons on. I was planning to use the leftover wool but it was way too big for the holes LOL. So off to the local sewing centre to find some matching thread.

Reflections

Wearing this is like being wrapped up in a big fluffy blanket 😊 It’s perfect sizing, unlike the Sailor’s Dream Sweater 🤨 I also adore the subtle colour gradations in the orange wool. I love it and it was worth the cost and effort ❤️ I will need to look up how to look after it (laundry wise) so it lasts a long time.

In hindsight, what I really wanted was the Green Cardigan but in orange (the difference is the hem and neckband are not in a contrast colour, only the stripes on the sleeve). But I’m not too fussed because the cardigan is so large the majority of it is orange anyway 🤣 I would need to angle my head quite a bit to see the brown hem.

Things I learnt:

• Tie back my hair…cos it’s so long it gets knitted/sewn in LOL
• When knitting sleeves in the round, have the wrong side up so that the stockinette stitch ends up on the right side
• How to ‘evenly pick up stitches’ on a long neckband
• For neckbands, start knitting on the side that would be on the right if you were to wear it properly (ie not inside out)
• Need to review how to pick up stitches for neckbands
• You can cast off knit stitch for a nice braided edge 😮

Categories: Sewing

Tagged as: Knitting Loopy Mango

hikaru