A few years ago, Hannah Fettig designed the simple yet awesome Whisper Cardigan, published in Interweave Knits, and I made one right away. What I love about it is that it's a sweater that goes with just about anything - you can pull it on over a tee shirt, you can pair it with a dress, whatever, and it doesn't use much yarn. It's really more of a shrug than a sweater, a shrug with a long "skirt" or body to it. That sweater was so popular, Hannah re-issued it (with a few modifications) as the Wispy Cardigan, published it herself, and more people started knitting it. Her mods made the sweater a little more crisp - added ribbing to the bottom and the sleeve cuffs, most notably, so that the ends didn't curl up.
My old Whisper is pretty much spent. I knit it out of 100% merino laceweight yarn, and the armpits have felted entirely. I knew it was time to make another, and I decided that I'd just go ahead with the Wispy for myself. However, I realized that in my Seattle climate, laceweight maybe wasn't the most practical choice if I really wanted something I could wear most of the year.
In truth, sport is my favorite weight yarn. I wish there were more patterns written for sport weight, because it's kind of the best thing ever. One of my favorite sport weight luxury yarns is madelinetosh pashmina. It's pricy, but it's simply fabulous and well worth the cost. I got the hankering to knit myself a Wispy out of pashmina, and I was hooked! I picked up a few skeins from ESK and prepared for the awesome...and awesome is exactly how it came out.
PATTERN: Wispy Cardi by Hannah Fettig
NEEDLES: US 6 (4.0mm), US 4 (3.5 mm)
YARN: madelinetosh pashmina in Antler
SO. In order to modify this puppy for sport weight yarn, I first knit myself a swatch. Somehow, magically, my gauge was very, very close to the slated pattern gauge, so that made life a little simpler. I decided to knit the bulk of the sweater on 6s and the ribbed collar band on 4s.
One thing I knew I wanted to do was convert the sleeves to knitting in the round, and make them more fitted and tapered (I do love a fitted sleeve). This pattern has an interesting construction where you knit the shrug first, going up one arm, across the back and down the other arm, then you pick up for the body. So to modify the sleeves, I started off with 52 stitches in the round, knit my ribbing for 10 rows, then knit 5 rows and increased 2 stitches every 7 rows till I had 72 stitches. I then knit the pattern as written until I got to the other sleeve, and I reverse engineered what I did on the first. The result? A well-fitting shrug with nice, fitted sleeves.
Otherwise, I basically knit the pattern as written, the only other change being the rate of increase on the body. I knit the first 6" with an increase every other row, then changed to every 4th row for the rest of the skirt. This way, my front panels didn't come too far into my middle, what with the length I was knitting.
Really, really pleased with the result. Pashmina is such a delightful yarn, and the sport weight will mean that I can get a lot of wear out of this just about all year in Seattle. I'm pleased to say that I only used 2 skeins of yarn for this sweater, so it's really not terribly expensive to splurge for a sport weight luxury yarn!
Plus, another fun thing with this one - I explored some new spots in my 'hood for the photos. It's so easy to fall into a rut with your photos, don't you think? I find myself lazily heading to the same spots to pose, and it's so much better when you can pick out someplace new as a backdrop!
