I have had the yarn for this project for a very long time, back from when I was obsessed with the Caron Simply Soft yarns. I bought a bunch of different colors – sage green, persimmon, plum wine, three shades of blue, and black. I gave the plum wine ones to my mom and had plans for the blues and black, but the sage and persimmon were still waiting for projects. When I was going through my stash and Pinterest board to try to find projects for the yarn I had accumulated, I knew the Remnant Stripe Cardigan was going to be perfect for this yarn. The yarn is silky soft and would drape beautifully, so I set out to knit one of the biggest projects I ever made.
I wanted the cardigan to be a single color, so I didn’t actually do the “remnant stripe” part. I also didn’t knit the front part separately, opting to pick up stitches from the side and knitting outward instead. And while the simple stockinette stitch throughout made things easier, it was excruciating to knit so much of the same thing. There was no variation until I got to the sleeves, and then it was just increases and decreases. I loved the seamless raglan sleeves though and learned a provisional cast on. The front knit-on stripe was also a nightmare because of how many stitches there were and how long it took to do a single row. I saw no progress after a lot of work and had to decrease because it was becoming wavy. It was also very difficult to see when I needed to stop because I couldn’t try it on since everything was on a single circular needle.
I made a few mistakes with this cardigan, the most major of which were knitting too tightly in the beginning, which was the hip area, and also reversing the stitch on the front part to match the pattern. Since I was knitting perpendicular to how the pattern was, the knitting curved the other way (inward instead of outward), so it doesn’t look as good. But in the end, I didn’t want to go through all that pain again, so I didn’t redo it. Although it doesn’t wrap around as well as I would have liked and doesn’t drape as well as I was expecting, it’s still silky soft and warm to wear and people at work ask if I made it myself. I also adore the color, so it’s a treat to wear.
Here are links to this project on Ravelry and Pinterest.
