Shalom Cardigan

First, an update on me: Here's why the blogging has been sparse lately. I've been dealing with a moderate level of dysthymia lately. It's nothing too serious, and I've back on track with seeing my therapist, who I'd been blowing off with terrific success. Mostly it's just life's little stresses, but they decided to all come at me at once. And, okay, some of them aren't so little.

As I was telling Nancy (my therapist), when it's one huge stressor that I'm handling, I can do that like nobody's business. I know how to compartmentalise that so I can go to work, still socialise, etc. But when it's a bunch of smaller things all at once, it really and truly confounded me. I've been so busy juggling them all that I didn't know how (or have time to figure out how to!) to manage those stressors.

And the reason I haven't blogged yet about the trip to Victory Junction Camp with my mom is because that week was absolutely the best, most carefree week that I've had in the past two months. It was like walking past the store that has their door open and AC blasting on the hottest summer day, and I just haven't been able to get in the right mindframe to give it the blog post it deserves.

NOW, on to the Shalom Cardigan.

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After four years of knitting, I decided to FINALLY knit something for me. Enter the Shalom Cardigan (link for Ravelry users only). But I liked the modifications that Ravelry user ishi has done: She added sleeves, the waist shaping was gone, and two more buttons were added. So, once again, Brook to the rescue. She helped me figured out some maths when I needed to redo the pattern to my measurements. Had I been sticking to the regular pattern, I could have figured out the maths myself, but figuring out the maths at the same time as I was taking into consideration a pattern mod was making my head explode.

However, once it was completed and I tried it on it had the unfortunate effect of making me look several months pregnant. But I thought it might just fit my mom. The biggest hurdle (no pun intended) would be her bust since her bust line is larger than mine. But if she would be comfortable wearing it without buttoning it, it might work. So when she visited me the first week in December she tried it on (sans sleeves, since I'd halted progress in disgust when I'd realised it was no longer for me). It was a perfect fit. I wouldn't even had to frog the garter stitch hem to make the body longer!

She asked me to make the sleeves as long as I could with the remaining half skein of yarn. Brook helped me out with that, recommending that I knit one sleeve from the outside of the yarn ball and the other sleeve from the center pull. That worked well, and I ended up having MUCH longer sleeves than I anticipated!

The finished product on Christmas Day (well, fake Christmas Day due to the blizzard):