In yesterday’s post, I talked about knitting the yoke of the Roberta Bobble Cardigan, a free pattern for which I changed the yarn. I’m knitting with two strands of yarn held together, one is the UNIVERSAL YARN Penna, a lace fuzzy mix of alpaca, extra fine merino, and nylon, and the other is FIBRA NATURA Kingston Tweed, a blend of wool, alpaca, and mixed fibers.

Now it’s time to divide the stitches for body and sleeves.

I place the sleeve stitches on scrap yarn and continue knitting the body. I panic as it looks like I will run out of the Penna yarn! The bobbles used up more yarn than expected.

I stop knitting the body and place all body stitches on a spare needle.

I will finish the sleeves first and I will knit the body afterwards. The length of my cardigan will depend on the quantity of yarn I have.

Judging by the remaining UNIVERSAL YARN – Penna yarn I will have to knit the ribbing with just one yarn. The yardage in the FIBRA NATURA – Kingston Tweed is more and therefore there will be enough yarn to do all the ribbing: cuffs, bottom ribbing, and the front ribbing with just this yarn.

The bobbles through me off when I estimated the yarn requirements for the cardigan.

I would have needed 7 balls of Penna yarn to be able to complete the ribbing with two yarns held together.

So, the decisions are made I will knit all ribbings with one yarn with smaller needles, and I will adjust the length of the cardigan depending on how much Penna yarn I have.

The sleeves are done, and I continue knitting the body up to the last inch of Penna yarn, I even use the swatch yarn! The body is long enough for me, I don’t have to get more yarn!

There is already a slight color difference between the body and the ribbing as for the ribbing I use just one strand of yarn and the texture is also different in the ribbing section. Having 1/1 rib for the sleeves and 2/2 rib for the bottom and button band will be more than I like. I will work all ribbings (sleeve, bottom, button band) in 1/1 rib.

The Button Band

As I’m using finer yarn for the button band, I must change the way I pick up stitches for it. The pattern asks to pick up 2 stitches for 3 rows (2/3 ratio) but I had to pick up 3 stitches for every 4 rows (3/4 ratio) to get more stitches along the front and the V-neck.

I realize how soft the combination of FIBRA NATURA Kingston Tweed and UNIVERSAL YARN Penna is and I’m looking forward to wearing it in the spring. Join me tomorrow for all the remaining finishing work and for a glimpse at the spring cardigan.

This is part 4 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 3: Knitting the Roberta Bobble Cardigan | progress and project notes

Go to part 5: 5 things I learned knitting the Roberta Bobble Cardigan

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