A cozy cardi

I finally finished this one.

This is the Mendocino cardigan designed by St*rmore. I have to cheat on her name because she's notorious about complaining when people alter her patterns, even if for personal use, and this one was modified. Some of the modifications were accidental, and some were deliberate.

Accidental Modifications --

There are side vents at the lower hem edged in seed stitch. Only I managed to knit them onto the wrong side of the cardigan fronts, and I didn't catch this until the pieces were blocking, so I had to either re-knit or live with it. I chose to live with it. I added 9-stitch-wide panels of seed stitch under the back side vent, stitched to the fronts, so that the side vents have mini-plackets now. And for the fronts, where the extra seed stitch can be seen near the bottom button, I have decided to call this a design feature. It doesn't bother me that much, to be honest, even if I never would have done this on purpose.

Deliberate Modifications --

The collar. Oh, the collar. This collar is loose and low, hitting somewhere between normal scoop neck and crew neck lines. That's one of the things I like most about this sweater, actually. It won't ever bind around the neck.

But as designed, the collar is bigger than mine, and it's knit on before the button bands are added. This would have resulted in a gap of almost two inches at the top of the button band which would be just band, no collar. I didn't want that. To my eyes, that gap was too wide. So I added the button bands first and knit the collar onto the full neck circumference.

I made two other modifications. First, I wanted a shirt-point collar style, so at the front on either side, I added one short row just above the right and left button bands. If you look closely, you will see that the collar is slightly wider at the collar points than at the rest of the collar.

Second, I wanted to build in some extra ease in the collar fall. Collars are composed of two parts, the stand and the fall. The stand is the part that rises up from the neckline and is closest to the neck. Then there's a fold or roll line, and the fall is the outer part of the collar that is on top of the outer garment and hides the stand from view. A stand should be slightly smaller than a fall in order for the collar to lay properly, so I added a few extra stitches to the stand after the roll line right around the shoulder seams. I probably added too many because I ended up with a slight point at the tops of the shoulders (not really visible in this picture), but I kind of like the way it looks. So I'm leaving it. I could use the iron to shape the wool there and reduce that point, but I'm not going to bother. The collar rolls beautifully as it is, and I don't feel like monkeying with it.

So that's it! I'm pleased with the finished product, and I have to say that the Sublime yarn is well named. It really is Sublime. This cardigan is as soft and warm as a favorite old bathrobe, the kind of thing I'll be tempted to wear every day this winter.