Tweedy love, aran confusion
Been a while since we had some yarn pr0n, no? Here’s some New England highland worsted.
Some of you boiling over in August heat probably don’t want to look at a gorgeous, rough, red tweedy wool right now. But the weather here is gorgeous – windy, wet and cool. After a worrying dry spell in June, we’ve been having a lot of rain all last month, and hopefully things will continue like this till September. My plan is to whip up this yarn, before the October heat sets in, into the Tweedy Aran Cardigan. The pattern, signature Norah Gaughan, is beautiful and deceptively simple; I like the waist shaping and the jacket-y look with the collar. Since it’s worsted, it should go fast. But I have been stuck at a few inches for the last week, tweedy-ling my thumbs about the sizing.
Someone on Ravelry suggested that the sweater on this model has a lot of ease (the size shown is 42.5″). I usually like my cardigans with a couple of inches of ease – say, 40″-41″ – but I quite liked the slouchy-but-shapely look at first and opted for this size (the next one down is 38″, which means zero ease for me). But now as I get increasingly irritated and indecisive about which size to make for myself, she is looking more and more like a convalescing character in an early twentieth century English novel to me, with her sweaters getting too big for her.
Also, the stated gauge is 4.5 spi for stockinette on size 7. Usually this means I have to go down two sizes to get this gauge – but for the first time ever, my swatch on size 7s showed 4 spi at some parts and 4.5 at others. Aaaaaargh! Swatch with size 6 gave me 5 spi. More aaaargh! I finally started the 42.5 size with the left front with a size 7, thinking a bit more ease would yield e a nice, loose outdoorsy jacket, of sorts. I’m still inclined to continue this size, but all the neatly fitted cardigans on Ravelry are making me dither a bit. With such heavy detailing, it’s difficult to just do some arithmetic and figure out the final size with all the different gauges. What should I do?
I know, I know, knitting the whole left front will give me a sense of the finished dimensions and fit, and I just have to suck it up and knit it to be sure, yes? That way I won’t have to rip out the whole thing, no?
I vote to go down a size. You can always block something a bit bigger, but going the other way doesn’t really work.
It’s also gorgeous yarn, and will look great in that pattern, I think.
I’d say go for the slightly larger size. Rough tweedy wool isn’t my favorite next-to-skin wear, and you want to have some leeway in the shirts you put underneath. I’ve got a veeeeery fitted cardi that I can only wear skintight t-shirts with. So if I get hot, I can’t take off the cardi because it’s not very professional-looking!
Well, I think that first there’s the reality that this will look different on a real woman than it does on an anorectic model. My thought looking at it is that if there’s too much ease, the waist shaping will tend to accentuate the hips too much and make them appear disproportionately large. So maybe go with the size 7 needles and the smaller size? That way, even if it does end up a little large, it won’t be with so much ease that it billows around the hips.
that’s a pretty color for that cardigan. Me too hearts Norah’s design.
After hopping over to ravelry to see what you were talking about… my two cents: I’m thinking that the fit of the cardigan looks great both ways. You could always make two….
I think maybe down a size. Blocking always can stretch the measurements a bit……you may have to do some ripping though….
I have the same problem attaining 4.5 spi. In the US, most size 7 needles are 4.5mm and most size 6 are 4.0mm. I managed to find some 4.25mm needles from Japan and Europe that allow me to achieve the elusive gauge.
If you can’t find them, I vote to go for the larger size.