I was having a lovely time in Tasmania when my friend Hélène asked me if I was going to knit the Kate Davies Carbeth cardigan. Er, I hadn’t thought about it, but immediately went off to Ravelry to check it out. Next thing I know, I had the pattern downloaded to iBooks on my phone and I was knitting furiously!
I had packed some lovely wool that I bought in Vancouver and did a rough calculation and thought I’d get the cardigan from it (I had planned to make a quite different cardigan). The wool was Sweet Georgia, colour Aegean, so it had shades of blue, plus a bit of green and a hint of purple. I really want a yellow one like Kate’s though…
I finished the cardigan whilst still in Tasmania and had various opportunities to wear it, so went off to the op shop to find buttons. I found five daisy shell buttons and some other random buttons, so my top button is odd, and looks odd!
This photo was taken on the beach at Hell’s Gate, Strahan.
I’m showing a close up of the front of the cardigan as I wasn’t totally happy with the closure. The front bands are finished with knitted on i-cords, which is a beautiful finish, but on the right hand side the i-cords are also used as loops for the buttons. I found that I had to sew my buttons right over onto the knitting to get a neat finish. I also did all this in the car and didn’t quite get the spacing even, but that’s another story!
As soon as I got home I unpicked it all, redid the i-cord and used snaps as the closure. I am much happier with this finish. I would have added buttons all the way down but Mark likes it like this. I am still considering what to do with it, but in the meantime I shall leave it as is and keep him happy!
If I made another Carbeth I think I would work proper buttonholes into the ribbed band which would also resolve the problem. The button on the collar came from my Mother-in-Law’s stash and looks to be from the 1960s. It is handmade from some sort of ribbon and is quite lovely.
During the knitting of this cardigan there was many conversations with Hélène as the body (knitted in one piece) is very short. The cardigan is described as cropped but I had serious concerns that it wasn’t even going to hit my waist so I added 5cm. I’m a teeny bit sorry now as I think it’s lost its distinctiveness. On the other hand, I will wear it more often at this length.
I mentioned that I thought I had sufficient yarn for the cardigan, but the pattern calls for doubled yarn and I could immediately see that it was going to be a close run thing. Add to this the fact that I added to the body length and I was in trouble. I searched the world but this wool in this colour is no longer available (lots of other incredible colours though), so I was a bit stuck. I started carrying a piece of wool around with me and when we visited a lovely historic spot called Richmond I found a wool shop that sold ethically produced wool from the Tasmanian Midlands, called White Gum wool. They had a shade that toned in perfectly. Now I’ve mentioned it, can you see? I did my usual trick of using one strand of original with one strand of the new wool, but next to the Sweet Georgia, the new wool looks a little flat. The Sweet Georgia is gorgeous and seems to reflect the light somehow.
The photos in Tasmania show the cardigan being worn in an unblocked state and it really does look better now it’s been properly blocked. Having said that, I love seeing it in such a beautiful setting, and I’m slightly obsessed with the back view – that gorgeous inverted V shape is what I fell in love with first.
Worn in Tasmania with my Jalie Éléonore pull on jeans, and back home in Perth I’m wearing the Ralph Pink Coco trousers.