Oranje Cardigan

Last week Thursday, I had nearly finished Oranje (designed by Ann Weaver) but for the cuff seams and buttons. I reeaaaaallly wanted to wear it to the Friday night River City Yarns Comedy Night event featuring the Yarn Harlot.

Here's where I brag about my husband, who is an extremely sweet guy. How sweet? Well, so sweet that while I packed my things for our trip to Calgary and wound yarn for my work knitting, he sewed on every last button. All 15 buttons. All so I could keep working on my work knitting and still get to wear the sweater. The next day, it only took me a few minutes to finish the cuffs, and he dropped me off at River City Yarns so I could get my ticket, meet Fiona Ellis and Stephanie Pearl McPhee (aka The Yarn Harlot), and spend the day knitting between one place and another while waiting for the event to begin.

I wish I could have been able to attend some of the workshop sessions--I heard they were brilliant--but I had to settle for just the evening talk, which was funny, touching, wonderful, and everything you would expect. The best bits of the day though were meeting so many other knitters and talking shop with them. It can get rather lonely sitting at the computer grading patterns, sitting at home knitting samples, and well, procrastinating alone too. Much more fun to head for coffee with your colleagues when you hit a point where you need a break, right?




All the people I met were absolutely lovely. I'm a bit shy about going up to talk to people that I don't know, but Oranje did the work for me, and brought people by for a chat. I'm just as pleased with that as I am with the sweater itself, which I think turned out lovely.

I only made the one slight change, which was to move the waist shaping very slightly upward (adding a few rounds before starting anyhow) and one set less of decreases/increases to make it fit a little bit better. It fits nicely, so yay! It worked.

I might still tack down the steeks with a bit more of my orange yarn (Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Sport, overdyed back in this post with both Kool-Aid Orange and Wilton's Golden Yellow to make a much more orange orange than the Pumpkin yarn I started with).

Now that it's done? Other than wearing it all the time (like in the snow yesterday), I'm busy sewing a lion costume. Should have more on that in a day or two (hopefully)!