Presenting: My First Reverse-Engineered Project

Here it is: The Sears Copycat Cardigan.

For a quick recap, I wanted to make something that looked like this:
And I ended up making this:




I won't pretend that it was easy. In fact, it was a lot of work, and a lot of thinking went into everything I did with it. I've never had a project that required so much ripping out of stitches and re-knitting of sections. First time making pockets, first time knitting a cardigan from the bottom up with cables.

And I love it.

The blocking process was really important in this case. It relaxed the seed stitch sufficiently to give me the extra length I was looking for, as well as to reduce the "bunched up" look of the stitches. Seed stitch is really just a type of ribbing, and tends to pull up on itself. Blocking really helped to settle it down.

I may steam block this a bit further, but for now, I'm happy with the result. Happy, and exhausted. Sure, the buttonholes could be better, the buttons could be lighter, the collar could be longer. But it's finished. I've declared it.

And yeah, I still love it.