I really enjoy knitting. When I don’t mess up its actually relaxing! I don’t make a mistake every time, but I am a relatively new knitter and errors are bound to happen.

I’ve knit a few things now and have found Ravelry really helpful to find patterns and inspiration for the next knitting project. Right now, I am about to start again for the second time on a sweater that a part of me fears may end up as a project that never sees completion… but I am going to dive back in anyway because I just love this sweater!

Rocky Coast Cardigan by Hannah Fettig

The sweater in question is the Rocky Coast Cardigan, by Hannah Fettig. The pattern is available in the book, Coastal Knits, which she collaborated on with Alana Dakos. I love this book and the patterns! As soon as I saw it, I ordered it right away online and started dreaming about having my very own Rocky Coast Cardigan.

First thing I had to do was find yarn and needles for the pattern. That was a bit of a challenge. Our best selection here is Michaels and some of the more obscure knitting supplies can be hard to get. For the sake of getting started, I ended up going with a grey bamboo yarn that I thought would be a comparable weight to the yarn. After I did the first swatch I realized I had to get different needles. After the second swatch the gauge looked almost right, but not perfect. Then I realized I needed to do the swatch in the cable pattern. Realizing I messed up both swatches and wasn’t all that sure about the bamboo yarn, I decided to abandon the sweater for the time being. Frustration had set in and I had to walk away from it for a while otherwise there would have been a bonfire of yarn in the backyard.

A few months later and my love for that sweater just keeps drawing me back in. I also just learned that we now have a good yarn shop in town and I could get some decent yarn for this project!! So off I went yesterday to the new yarn shop and brought home some Cascade 220 Superwash in a lovely ivory, just like the original. I could have gone with the regular wool, but I’ll be able to wash and dry this version and that seemed like a better idea.

Cascade 220 Superwash Wool

Now its time to swatch…then hopefully cast on if my gauge is good. I keep thinking, I’ve made a sweater before and I like knitting cables so it can’t be that bad. At least I’m not knitting a sock. Those things are like trying to solve the Rubik’s cube. I still haven’t completed one.