As you can see, I’m motoring along on the cardigan at a rate far beyond my usual. My attention has quickly wandered to other projects, and this is the rate I need to go at to try and outpace my impatience.

A few more things about the project to tide you (me?) over until the final summary:

–The yarn, Ornaghi‘s Merino Kind, does wash beautifully.

–Unfortunately, the yarn stretches when it’s washed. I knit the swatch at 18 sts to 4 inches (the proper final gauge), and it came out of the bucket 16.5 sts to 4 inches (no change in length).

More unfortunate was that I had brain glitch between washing the swatch and casting on for the yoke, and began to knit at 18 sts to the inch, not 19.5. I did not realize what I’d done until I was ready for the waist shaping.

–The swatch does not lie. The entire sweater stretched 1.5 stitches for every 4 inches after–hoping against hope that the swatch *had* lied–I washed it.

I ripped the whole thing and began again, knitting at 19.5 stitches to the inch. And I was all the way to the end of the yoke again when it occurred to me that the yarn probably wouldn’t stretch twice. So I decided that I would like negative ease in this cardigan and kept knitting.

All I need is another sleeve and buttons, and we’ll see how this little shenanigan turns out.