I finished the Mr. Greenjeans Cardigan last week. While I was trying it on I realized that in five years of knitting, this was the first sweater that I have made for myself that I’m actually going to wear. This makes me really happy. This sweater is a top down raglan with a cable and rib section on the body and on the sleeves. I think it will be a great casual sweater to wear with jeans.
. I made this same sweater a few years ago out of an acrylic yarn. I wasn’t happy with the button band and the whole sweater needed serious blocking. In my beginner state I didn’t know that acrylic is basically impossible to block. This time I used Boroco Ultra Alpaca. It’s 50% wool and 50% alpaca. It has a much better drape than the acrylic sweater had. I also used a larger needle for the cable and rib section instead of the smaller needle it called for. It just didn’t make sense to me that I should use a smaller needle that would necessitate more blocking when I could use the larger needle and do less blocking. Now I’m just hoping for some cooler evenings so I can actually wear this cardigan before this fall.
I immediately cast on another cardigan. I was so pleased with the first one that I thought I would try another one and see how it went. This time I chose the Sitcom Chic Cardigan. It’s mostly stockinet with a garter and eyelet strip around the yoke. It has ¾ length sleeves and one button at the center of your chest. It was a fairly simple knit and worked up pretty quickly. I had a lot of knitting time last week since I skipped all the housework and knit instead. It’s just too bad I can’t get away with that every week. I’m done with all the knitting for this cardigan. I just have to do the finishing work and I’ll have a cute little cardigan to wear over summer dresses. It should be a little cooler than the other since it’s made out of a 75% cotton and 25% acrylic yarn.
crystal
Ana
Working out Kinks and Fingering Yarn 
May 16, 2012 @ 11:18:04
Hi! You actually CAN block acrylic with a steam iron. I’m actually going to try it myself with a shawl I knitted for my aunt! You just have to be really careful, or you can use a garment steamer. If you used a real steamer instead of the iron then it would be impossible to accidentally touch the fabric with the iron (that’s really all you have to worry about).
Here is the blog post I found on the topic!
http://beadknitter.blogspot.com/2009/03/you-can-block-acrylic.html
Susan 🙂
May 16, 2012 @ 11:41:49
Thanks for the info. I’ll have to try steam blocking acrylic. I especially like how the post says steam blocking is permanent. You don’t have to block every time you wash the garmet. I still have that acrylic cardigan in a drawer somewhere so I’ll put it to the test. Then I might have two wearable cardigans.