Where have I been? Not on the blog very often. But I promised you a FO post a while back, and here it is! The FO is my iteration of Leah’s Lovely Cardigan from More Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. It is emphatically not sweater weather in Phoenix, so pictures had to wait until we were up north (Querido took all these photos. Isn’t he nice?)

I do like the sleeves, a lot. They fit my pencil arms. And the color.

For 18 months of knitting, though, finishing this sweater was not the wonderful triumph I expected. I wore it a lot on vacation, and I’ll put it on when sitting in the wind tunnel at the reference desk at work, but I am not proud of it the way I’m proud of some of my other sweaters.

I do not like how the body turned out: my gauge has a way of measuring as perfect and then being too wide. The whole thing has far too much positive ease. Thank goodness the sleeves and shoulder yoke are snug: those keep the whole thing looking tidy, like I mean to go around with a buttonless sweater.

No specs here…but you can go look at Red’s Ravelry page if you’d like. And I’ll say that if you’d like to make a Lovely Cardigan of your own, I recommend an applied i-cord edging instead of the written thick band of garter. It’s hard to see in my rendition, because mine came out too tight and makes the front curl in, but done right, an applied i-cord looks wonderfully tidy. Go check out how Kate Davies does them.

Now that this is off my plate, I’m moving onward and upward, cataloging yarn and trying not to make the same mistakes in the next FO. Happy Weekend everyone!