The Stonecrop Sweater has been one of my favorite makes of 2019.  I cast on the cardigan as soon as it was published. The design elements spoke to two of my loudest knit-loving voices; stranded color work and color changing yarn.

The pattern has a few things that I absolutely love. It is easy to work from. It is not overly verbose. It is written for an inclusive number of sizes and it looks good!!! And I had just the things to use; EYB Tenderfoot, a new machine washable yarn with 75% Merino lambswool and 25% nylon in a fingering weight and a few skeins of SpinCycle Dyed in the Wool a 100% Domestic Wool sock weight yarn.

The pattern also has a few things I don’t always love the outcome on.  Firstly, circular yoke sweaters increase at the same rate all the way around. If you were to look at my body from a birds eye view, I am not a cylinder. I am more rectangular, with boobs on my front half.  This means anything cone shaped (which a regular increasing circular yoke is) without planned negative ease is going to be too big. Especially at the under arm.  This is my personal pet peeve. With some designs it is easy to accommodate for, but with something charted and something with very slim sleeves it is harder to change without knitting it first. Secondly, there are no stabilizing elements in this sweater.  The neck band in knit in line with the sweater, so no stabilizing picked up stitches at the neck. There are no seams to provide support.  Third, bobbles. All I could imagine is that I would end up with a bobble  centered on the aforemention boobs and look inappropriate.

I like to stay true to a pattern the first time I knit it so I can know where and how to make changed. Bearing that in mind,  here are the accommodations I made to have the best possible result for me.

1. I knit my neck band flat. That way when I cut the steel in the finishing of the sweater  I don’t have loose ends right up to the neck of the sweater.

2. I knit much smaller bobbles.  In the stitch specifying the  bobble, I ( k,yo, k, then k the 3 loops together through the back) this resulted in a little knotty slub type bobble that stays in line with the structure of the surrounding cable.

3. I steam blocked to make sure things were behaving: Floats, cable texture, length and so on. I do this on most projects so I am never surprised when I get to the end of the knitting.  I also tried on the sweater as I went… Those pictures are on Instagram @adventureswithwhitney

4. I knit the hem band flat as well. Same reason as the neck band. I do like a tidy finish.

5. I used a sewn steek. I used a washable yarn for both colors in this sweater and after all that knitting I wanted things to be tidy and secure.

6. The Steek… Just because it is fun to see!

7. A pullover becomes a cardigan.

8. Facing the raw edge. I used a twill tape and was careful to not stretch my knitting while tacking the tape with thread to the picked up button band and the purl bumps of the sweater fabric.

9. The finished Stonecrop.  While I was absolutely in love, I felt like the neck was sagging and that the under arms were long. I spent about a month planning what to do next while wearing my sweater. (Step one of this process was to promptly cast on a second because it was so much fun to knit.)

10. Ultimately I used a single crochet chain in the first row of purl bumps on the inside of my sweater to tighten up the neckline. I was careful to not pull too much to prevent the fabric from gathering. I also added one more repeat of zigzag to the sleeves and made my cuffs 4″ long, knitting with a 3 sizes smaller needle because I did not decrease rapidly enough on the sleeves.  This anchors the sleeves at the wrist and I am much happier now with my finished sweater.