Basic knitting

A bit of a break from vintage pattern projects and indeed, in a way, from sewing in general. Just in case you may have wondered why I didn't seem as productive as usual for the past two week, this is the reason. I've been working on this little cardigan. 

I made it on my knitting machine using two strands of very thin blue yarn and one of thin beige. The three together still make for such fine knitting that it would take me ages to do it by hand (I can knit by hand but neither well nor fast). 

It is a pretty basic garment, maybe the kind of thing that might make you wonder why I would bother making it myself. Well, I did because I can. And because I've been using my sporty cardigans a lot lately and wondered if I should add a knitted one to the collection.  

Long raglan sleeves, a back bodice, a front bodice in two halves connected by a zipper and fairly high collar. That's it. Not much different from lots of little cardigans out there. I'm still proud of it though. I made this pattern myself. Calculated how many stitches in how many rows would be needed. I've done this a couple of times before but I'm still pleased when it works out. 

The knitting itself went pretty quickly. It's the sewing together that usually seems to take forever but even that was OK this time. The thing that took a lot more time than expected was putting in the zipper. I had knitted a few stitches extra at the center fronts to sew the zipper to. I had decided to do that using the sewing machine. And I did. But unfortunately, I had stitched so close to the zipper teeth that the zipper didn't work. It would have been fine for a normal fabric but not for the more loose structure of knit work.

So, I had to unpick the entire zipper which was not a nice thing to do at all. I re-stitched it a bit further away from the teeth and then sewed the knitted seam allowance to the back of the front bodice pieces by hand. And then, I prickstitched the edges of the zipper tape to the seam allowance. Even after that, I did not end up with a finish on the zipper I would have been happy with in my sewing. And yet, I don't think I mind.