Tau cardigan

Even though I couldn’t see well, I got bold after I got to the end of my Playful shawl. And I had been rummaging around in my yarn stash for something else to do.

By this time, I was getting better at zooming in and scanning text with my tablet. I still couldn’t read something like a regular novel, even increasing the size of the text to very large. But I could zoom in on patterns and move them around to get the gist of instructions, as long as they weren’t too complicated.

My issues would be dropping stitches, having to tink (knit backwards) sections, and keeping track of my place. But I was willing to take on the challenge, and Tau by Melanie Berg seemed to be the right fit. I already had the yarn in stash (from 2017) that I’d “assigned” to the project.

I hit the ground running and was pleased with my progress on December 22 until I discovered that my gauge was off using the recommended needle sizes. When I had tried it around my neck, it felt a little tight.

I stopped and knit a gauge swatch using bigger needles. I actually had to go up two sizes to get the correct gauge. How did I check? Using both my camera to take a photo and the magnifier app to take “snapshots” that aren’t saved, but allow you to freeze the image to really blow it up and count.

Then I ripped back and started over. It didn’t take too long to get back to where I was and I surpassed that the next day. Knitting on the front and purling on the back, along with a couple of increases and a tiny bit of patterning with knits, purls, and slip stitches was fairly straightforward (and something I could do without having to see the stitches much).

Obviously I had a lot of time on my hands, and listened to podcasts and audiobooks. By December 26, I was able to split for the sleeves.

I knit a little more on the body, then knit some on the sleeves with the same ball of yarn. I knew I was going to run into some color issues between skeins. These yarns are hand-dyed and there are no dye lots. Even though I bought them at the same time at the same place, there could be some variation between them. I figured if they were fairly evenly changed in the body and sleeves it could look like I planned the “color blocking.”

I tried it on for size at a couple of different points, and everything seemed to be fitting well – much better than at the very beginning with the smaller needles, so I’m glad I caught that early on. (Sometimes I gauge swatch, and sometimes I don’t – it just depends).

Of course, there was variation between the the skeins. It seemed visible in the balls when I wound them, but it was pretty evident in artificial light. I’m hopeful that it won’t be quite as glaring in natural light as I’m wearing the sweater.

The difference between the first and second skein is much more stark than the difference between the seond and third skein, but I can live with it. I finished knitting the body on January 21. I still had the sleeves to finish, and completed that on January 26. Then I had to order buttons. I tried some of the recommended size (10mm or 3/8 inch) natural coconut shell buttons, but they were actually too small, in my opinion, for the size of the buttonholes that I knit.

So I ordered both the 1/2 inch and 5/8 inch packages, and decided that the 5/8 inch are the best choice of the three sizes. Apparently my buttonholes are a bit larger than the pattern thinks they should be. I definitely don’t want to be wearing this and have the buttons pop open, even though I’ll likely be wearing something underneath it.

I finally got around to washing and blocking it, and I’m very happy with the results. Of course, I took it off the blocking board and threw it over the back of the chair, so it has a few creases, but I didn’t want to take the time to steam those out before sharing me wearing it.