TRANSfiguration Tuesday: OLAS cardigan episode 2

OLAS is now officially finished!!!!!!!! The mods my spinning group gave me worked beautifully, and now I’m all snazzily dressed up in a nice warm cabled cardigan. So, want to see a before and after?

Have a bonus one because I’m in love with the length on this thing!!!!

So, what mods did I make???

• Took out another 6 stitches in the shoulders. Apparently I have thinner shoulders than most cis guys (this is probably a combination of afab and short(ish) 😛
• Removed *12 rows* in the shoulder shaping in the sleeves. I’m ridiculously impressed with this. This involved decreasing a lot faster, so I had another 2 rows of cast off 3, then decreased every row instead of every other row, and had 2 rows of cast off 4 before the final cast off. Like, this seems insane. But now it fits and it was so much easier to sew in (yay for practice!)
• Goofed up a cable but we’re not talking about that because I don’t think it’s that noticeable when it’s on. I just wanted to point out that this thing isn’t perfect (even though I don’t care because I love it that much).

 

Until this cardigan, I was purely basing which size I make off the bust measurement (tbf, this is my first cardigan after top surgery, it makes more sense than it sounds now!). In future, I’m definitely going to look at more of the sizes on the schematic. And measure all of me at some point. I’m still looking for a decent record sheet for that, and I’ll be sure to link it here when I find a good one!

TRANSfiguration Tuesday- OLAS cardigan episode 1

Soooooooooooo.

Umm. Good news: I finished knitting the OLAS cardigan. Bad news…umm, well, it doesn’t fit great.

No, let’s try that again. Bits of it fit pretty damn awesomely, even if I do say so myself. I got the length on the sleeves and body right, the width of the sleeves and the body are pretty good. I even matress stitched up everything beautifully (that’s a lie. Once I got into the swing of things it was beautiful. There’s a little bit I need to go over). More practice is needed…

It’s..well, it’s two things. I messed up counting on the buttonholes, so I fudged it by putting a sixth buttonhole in and it’s too high up. And the shoulders. Ok just look at it.

I’m also unsure about the collar. It might need more rows to fold over properly, or me to know how to handle it more than I do. And probably not that last buttonhole…

So. I *think* they’re the only three problems. And while I *think* I know what to do:

Sleeves

• Frog back to the last decreases on the sleeve
• Knit back to a few rows(4?) before I want to end the sleeve
• Split the sleeve stitches into 5 chunks and cast off that many over the next 5 rows
• Make notes on this as I go so I can replicate it/other can do similar

Body

• Frog back both fronts and back to final decreases for the sleeve
• Do something clever with the buttonholes (this needs more thinking about…)
• Put in more decreases on the sleeves. I’m not sure how many at this point, I’m asking some experts on Saturday
• Finish after the same number of rows on the body
• Maybe do something clever with the shawl collar. Again, needs more thinking about…

Then sew it all up again, and pretend it never happened…Well, no. I’m proud I’ve got (…learning?) the skills to fix this and end up with a cardigan I like. It’s worth the extra time, definitely!

TRANSfiguration Tuesday…planning Buttonbox

Ok, so…the modifications I’m making to buttonbox. If anyone has missed the reference: Buttonbox is a femme waistcoat, and I want a more masc one. However, this is the best starting point I’ve found. So, let’s have a go a modifying a pattern. The main changes I want to make are:

• Add more length. My trousers hang lower on my body when I’m going masc, to hide my hips, and I want the waistcoat to reach the top of my trousers, plus maybe an inch or two (I might need more buttons with this bit)
• Remove as much of the waist shaping as I can get away with. I’m not sure if I can get rid of all of it, given the massive difference between my hip and waist measurement (and I need to measure myself with my binder on to know how my masc bust fits into that madness)
• Change the scoop neck to a v-neck and start the decreases earlier. Also do fewer decreases so the neckline is pulled in closer to my neck. This also then means I have to do more decreases at the shoulder side to keep the length of the shoulder seams (for want of a better descriptor) the same. I may have to fudge the back for this- someone suggested short rows, which won’t be necessary (I think) b/c I can put any extra necessary length into it after I split for the armholes
• Keep the smaller shawl collar rather than the newer version with the larger shawl.
• Put in a ticket pocket. They’re neat, and I do a lot of travelling by train, so it would actually be really useful
• The classic put the buttons on the other side (assuming I don’t forget this when knitting the buttonband…)

If anyone has any other suggestions, either on these or completely different at all, feel free to suggest them in the comments 🙂