Sandnes Garn – New England's Narrow Road

The Eva Cardigan is knit in a DK yarn and is a low v-neck with four buttons. It is a design by PetiteKnit (link to pattern below). I began to knit this – cast on – around the middle of September and finished the end of October. I found it to be a good pattern and love the sweater. Also, I learned some new things along the way.

I used a new yarn too. Sandnes Garn Peer Gynt, which is a DK, but really seems more like a worsted to me.

Although I have knit a few cardigans, none have had a shoulder construction like this one. I also had to watch a video to complete the buttonholes.

The designer lists this pattern as a 4 out of 5 difficulty.

The Pattern and Yarn

The yarn is nice and I was very happy knitting with it. I bought mine at Wool & Company. It is made of Norwegian wool and the Peer Gynt is DK weight, but seems heavier. Wool and Company offers many colors, including heathers and tweed.

I bought 12 skeins of Sandnes Garn Peer Gynt yarn in color “Eucalyptus” green – per my daughter’s color request. I ended up with nearly two skeins leftover. But, better too much than not enough!

Peer Gynt yarn skeins leftover — Eva Cardigan leftover yarn

I knit a swatch with size 6US needles and it was a bit large. I don’t have many needles in size 5 (and then go down 2 sizes for the ribbing), so I chose to use the sixes (with size 4 for rib) and knit the extra-small size sweater. (Lots of various length needles are needed for this sweater in both the 4 and 6 sizes.)

However, this cardigan is being knit for my daughter, who is tall and thin, and likes longish sleeves. I’ll be adding length to the body (end measurement is 23 inches) and especially the sleeves (18.5 inches).

Wool and Company notified me that only 10 skeins were matching dye lot numbers, so two would be off, but very similar. I took them anyway, and have used one of the odd dye lots to knit the body ribbed hem. I was saving the other for the button band – but never had to use it.

Buy this pattern – Eva Cardigan – at Ravelry.

Hurdles During Knitting

After the initial neck knitting, stitches have to be picked up at each of the shoulders. I really didn’t know how to do this, so I used another needle to pick them up and then added those stitches to the main needle.

I think this may be called a “saddle shoulder”, but I’m not sure. The design idea is to keep the sweater from sliding off the shoulders – I think.

Sleeve 1 done!
Shoulder construction

Picking Up Stitches for Button Band

Picking up stitches for the button band is not at all my favorite thing to do when knitting! This always takes me hours. I love cardigans, but it’s one of the things I dislike about knitting them.

For this wide button band, which goes up one side, around the neck, and down the other, the total number of stitches picked up needed to be divisible by four in order to make the 2×2 ribbing. Also, while you’re at it, make sure both front sides have the same number of stitches.

At least the designer said to pick up 3 for every 4 stitches. I guess most knitters know this, but I appreciate the instructions. (This is something another designer didn’t bother to mention and my Carbeth cardigan is totally messed up because of it.)

I watched a helpful video by Cocoknits which advised to only do the picking up of stitches, and not “pick up and knit”. YES! Do this! Then, when your counts are off (be prepared to count and count and count), it is easy to remove the picked up stitches and fix the count, which I did… over and over. FINALLY.. I got everything worked out correctly.

How to Make the Buttonholes

The buttonhole directions in the pattern are a little confusing when it comes to doing the “double backward loop”. Many thanks to another knitter, who referenced the video below which shows how it’s done. I am not sure my purl 2 together through the back loop was done right, as it looked a little too loopy.

This YouTube video by Kimmie Mulkholm shows the buttonhole construction for the Eva Cardigan. It is not in English, but can be understood easily using CC or not.

In the End

I have a pretty nice sweater now, which is a gift for my daughter. Since she lives in New England, it will get used a lot. It is currently being dried, on mats in a room with the dehumidifier running (necessary here in Florida), and then the buttons will be added.

This sweater seems quite big. Then again, my gauge was off. The shoulders and sleeves fit me just fine and I knit the XS size. I would like a wider body for myself so I’m not sure which size I’d choose to knit for myself.

Read to wear
Eva is finished!
Back of Eva Cardigan

As is usually true of hand knits, especially wool knits, the fabric smooths out and ends up looking incredibly good. I’m so pleased with the end product. I would knit it again – next time it will be for me!

Here is a little post about how I sewed on the buttons.

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After some summer top knitting, I needed to have wool in my hands again. I chose a new pattern and some new-to-me yarn and got knitting on the Blueberry Vodka Lemonade sweater (pattern link below).

I made a stupid mistake when beginning the first rows after the neck ribbing, and had to rip it all out and begin again. Believing I would be able to do those yarn-overs just fine, I began to screw things up again – because, no I did not do yarnovers correctly. This time I kept knitting and took a refresher in doing yarn-overs.

Once I had all that down, the knitting went smoothly and the yoke became fun to knit.

The Yarn

I am knitting with Sandnes Garn Tynn Line Peer Gynt wool yarn (link goes to Wool & Co.). I’ve never knit with it before, but it’s soft and beautiful. There are some thick to thin areas, but I don’t mind that and I think it’s typical.

Although I bought two types and colors of yarn as possible choices for this project, the Tynn Peer Gynt worked out better for the needle size. I’ve ended up knitting with the black yarn.

Norwegian wool
New yarn
Swatches
“Peacock” Shetland wool color

Let’s Try This Thing On!

Using fingering weight yarn to knit a sweater means lots of little stitches and many rounds of knitting. Surprisingly, to me, I was done knitting on this fun project in just a little over a months time.

Finally I have split the body at the hem which means I can get this thing tried on! Yay…!

I am very pleased. That neckline seems perfect. A bit wide, but not too wide, just as the designer promised. I did knit for one more inch on the body, stopping at around ten inches and not nine. Two more inches of hem will be added, but first I plan to knit the sleeves.

We cannot run out of yarn on the sleeves, so I want to knit them without worry. IF I run low on yarn for the body ribbing, I can order another skein and not worry if it’s not a perfect match. *No problem here. I ended up with plenty of yarn even with adding a couple of extra inches to the body length.

Blueberry vodka lemonade raglan sweater knitting pattern — Hem split done, time to try it on

I began knitting this sweater on July 20th and today is August 15th, so it has taken almost a month to get this much done on the BVL sweater. *Then I finished on August 29th.

A few days later, I had one sleeve knit. They are 3/4 sleeves which stay wide until just before the short cuff. I ended up liking them a lot.

Decreasing for the Cuff

The knitting round where the many decreases are made, just before the cuff, gave me pause. Then I realized that the first set of knit stitches – in the parenthesis () – is done ONE TIME ONLY to begin the round. The next set of stitches – in the brackets [] is the number of stiches to knit along with the k2tog – and this is repeated in the round. The last set of stitches is what is left at the end of the round, and they will be knit – unless there are no stitches left and you knit zero.

For example: For my size, on this decrease round, I had to knit 2, then knit 4 + k2tog for the repeat, until I had only 2 stitches left at the end of the round, which were simply knit.

Buy the Blueberry Vodka Lemonade Pattern

Finished and Happy

It took me about a month to finish knitting the Blueberry Vodka Lemonade sweater. I enjoyed knitting it because there was always something going on while knitting. The yarn-overs at the raglan sleeves, the texture down each side, and the bottom split rib, all added to the enjoyment.

The sweater was dry after a day and I did a quick photo shoot. We were getting the outer bands from Hurricane Idalia, with wind and rain, so I couldn’t go outside.

I also love this yarn. It is wool, but very soft. I would compare it to Rauma, but it may actually be softer. The finished project is absolutely fabulous! I’m always amazed at much more lovely a hand-knit becomes when washed. I’m very happy with my new sweater!

I don’t often say this, because once I knit a pattern, I move on to something new, but this is a pattern I would absolutely use again.