I’ve had a revelation about knitted sweaters, and it seems so obvious in retrospect that you’re gonna laugh. I have always had trouble knitting a sweater that actually fit me, and generally they’re too small. All of a sudden it came to me; I’ve been choosing my bra size (36) instead of my actual bust size (40). Obvious, right? But this one silly thing evaded me. Now, go on and laugh.
Armed with my new knowledge, I’ve decided to take the plunge again. To make sure that I wouldn’t screw this up, I decided to give Amy Herzog’s CustomFit a try. I had Tito take my measurements to make sure they would be correct (his mom is a seamstress), plugged them into the system, swatched up some fabric using a skein of Tosh Lace that I’d had for a long time (colour way: Earl Grey), washed, measured, and chose the Featherweight Cardigan by Hannah Fettig.
Amy has a different way of measuring gauge swatches that is supposed to be more accurate. I followed the directions as carefully as I could and cast on. I even decided to be brave enough to knit the seamed version.
My first thought was ‘there is no way this is the back of a sweater’.
Rayna assured me that every knitters she knows who created a CustomFit sweater loved the results, to trust the pattern and keep going. Once I’d knit my way to the armholes, I stretched it out, and lo! The size was dead on. CustomFit rocks!
I’ve finished the back (took no time at all, for anyone who wants to try but is intimidated by the idea of a lace weight cardigan) and have started the fronts. My only concern now is that when I stretched it out I noticed some extremely strange pooling at the bottom:
See that diamond? Very weird. Looks like a coffee stain. I had to choose between frogging a lace weight sweater down to the hemline, vs living with the coffee stain. I put the question to my online knitter club (e.g. Instagram) and the overwhelming response was ‘it will be ok, onwards!’. So onwards I go, fingers crossed!