Cardigan in Sirdar Country Style: Right Front completed

September 9, 2013 by Elaine 6 Comments

Sirdar Cardigan Front Right

Shaping a patterned piece of knitting can be a very challenging task and I had been pleasantly surprised with how well the neck shaping of the left front had appeared to lend itself to the pattern, causing few problems. Lulled into a false sense of security, I confidently cast on started to knit the Right Front. However, It proved to be a completely different story when I reached the neck shaping this time and tried to incorporate the correct number of cast off stitches, imperative to the successful shaping of the neck, in with the ‘drop one/make one’ of the actual lace pattern.

The tricky shaped neck line

At one point I believe I pulled the same row back 3 times before I finally realised where I was going wrong and was able to proceed and I found myself having to give a considerable amount of thought at each new cast off, especially on rows 1 and 9 where the pattern switches, to give the staggered diamond appearance of the fern lace. I was relieved to finish the shaping and completed the piece in a relatively short space from that point.

The back and two sides

Now I have the sleeves to do and I’m hoping that these will be easier. The sleeve has the simpler zig-zag lace pattern on it but even so, the stitch increments (1 new stitch at each end of every 8th row or there abouts) will still need to be worked into the pattern but I’m hopeful that this won’t prove too taxing.

I would like to get at least the first of the sleeves finished during the course of this week but there are jobs to do in the house and the two gardens, not to mention a Mud and the two younger Mudlets who all seem to think they need to be fed at regular intervals when they are not at work/school (delete as applicable) …….

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