 Persimmon Symphony Cardigan
I was looking for something to play with while waiting for some yarn I'd ordered on-line, and came across most of a skein of Red Heart Symphony in persimmon, left over from trimming the brown jacket. Remembering how the symphony I'd used on my blue pull-over had lasted and lasted, I decided to try my luck, see how far I could get with what I had. Since symphony is so hard to frog, I wanted to do a pattern I was already familiar with, so I just started doing the same thing I did for my blue waves cardigan. I figured I could do some finishing details at the end to differentiate it. It's interesting how, though you can tell it's the same basic stitch pattern, it really looks different in the fuzzy symphony yarn than it does in the no-nonsense blue simply soft. It's also physically much ligher, though I'd guess it's about equally as warm. The color is interesting... most of the time it reads pretty strongly as "orange", but there's also a good bit of pinkness to it at certain times. I struggled with what kind of closure I wanted. I tried a cross-over-and-tie-at-the-side look first, and it was close, but it just pulled the stitch pattern out of alignment a bit more than I liked. I'm glad I didn't go all out with the collar. The color and flared sleeves are flamboyant enough, I don't need acres of collar floating around too. The buttons are a little uninspired and bland, but I suppose they'll do until I stumble across something spectacular to substitue. I had hoped to do some embroidery and/or beading embelishment, but everything I started looked lame, so I undid. Ah well, inspiration could still strike. I was a little dissappointed in it when I first finished it, but now that I've had a while (I was waiting for a laundry cycle to put it through before taking the pictures) to reflect, it's growing on me. I don't know how often I'll actually wear it, as the color's a bit out of sync with my current wardrobe, but I'm glad I have the option. Anyway, down to details. That first skein got me the front two pieces and about 2/3 of the back. So, naturally, I picked up another skein and finished up the back. Then I put a few-inch wide border around the front and neck to form a shawl collar. The plan was to use the remaining to make both sleeves, so I decided to make them short. Not short enough, however, as I ran out again with just a few inches to go on the second sleeve. Drat. So once again, I picked up one final skein. Since this effectively put me back at square one, with one largely unused skein of persimmon symphony, I decided to try to use up a little more and further differentiate this cardigan from the blue waves one by adding the flaring bottom part of the sleeves and a few more inches to the bottom. And then I singled out some V stitches to be buttonholes and edged them with embroidery floss and a blanket stitch. I used mainly the same strategy for making the top part of the sleeves as I did the last time, but I did vary it a bit near the top and I think the shape worked out a little better. Here are the notes I jotted down for myself, for future reference: BASE: ROWS 1-7: ROW 8: ROW 9: ROW 10: ROW 11: ROW 12: ROW 13: ROW 14: ROW 15: ROW 16: ROW 17-18: ROW 19: ROW 20: ROW 20: ROW 21: ROW 22:Cluster stitch to gather everything left up. For the bell part of the sleeves, I did the following: ROW 1: ROW 2: ROW 3: ROW 4: ROW 5: ROW 6: ROW 7: The collar went something like this: ROW 1: ROW 2: ROW 3-5: ROW 6: ROW 7: ROW 8-10: ROW 11: ROW 12: The bottom edge went something like this: ROW 1: ROW 2: ROW 2: ROW 3: ROW 4: ROW 5: so, to sum up, a lot of alternating of Vs, urchin stitches (SC-2DC-SC) and shells went into the borders, more or less on an improvisational basis, though once I found a combination I liked, I tried to repeat it to try to give this more of a planned look and less of a stab-in-the-dark loook. 
| ||||||||||||||||||