Good grief - it took me a week to take that photo...
This is kind of based on the Prima cardi I made before Stashlet was born (I'm sure I posted about it but I can't find it now), excpet that I made it up as I went along, knitting the sleeves by picking up stitches off the shoulders, and increasing back to my original number of stitches at the front.
So perhaps not much like the Prima cardi at all.
It's made with Sidar Big Softie which looks a lot like Rowan Polar (which seems to have been discontinued), although I haven't yet looked to see if they have similar guages. I knitted the body on 10mm needles and the rib on 8mm, although I think I could have gone down a mm or two and it would have still come out ok - my general knitting tension is pretty lose anyway`. The colours are Meringue 330 and Moose 326 (and anything with a moose in it gets my vote).
To be honest, I'm not that happy with it, but pulling out and reknitting single ply yarn is never a good idea in my experience, it just ruins it, so I kept going and hoped it would turn out semi-reasonable. My fault for not doing a guage square first, but it's too big, especially in the sleeves, and the shawl collar does more of a mandarin thing than shawl. But to put a positive spin on it, Stashlet will be able to wear this for several years.
The thing I'm most unhappy about is the hem. I turned back a couple of rows and stitched them into the body of the cardi but it's ended up flaring out and looking rather horrid. So I will unstitch it, pick up the stitches (er... is this confusing...?) and knit a few more rows on 8mm needles then reattach it. I hope that will do the job and it will look less like a 1970s flamenco dress.
I'm also tempted to say that it may well be too warm for Ireland but given the last couple of winters we've had, that might be a bit rash.
I do like a nice chunky yarn though, so I suspect that I'll be knitting with this again. With his dark hair, Stashlet could carry off a red cardi or chunky jumper much better than I ever could, but I'll be using a proper pattern or drafting something sensible before I put needles to yarn next time!











