My Blue Cardigan

 On Sparkpeople we do various Challenges and I joined in the July Stash Buster Challenge, I wanted to knit a cardigan that was made in one piece as I dislike picking up lots of stitches for the front bands.
So I hunted around and found this pattern on Ravelry

Corinne

Now for me this was a real challenge as I have never knitted a garment in one piece before and not used markers or short rows. Then there was the grafting of the sleeve seams to master as well so a challenge all round.
This was the end result

I am quite pleased with it, I need to get the buttons for it so closed it with a shawl pin for the moment to take a picture of it. It is not blocked yet but still does not look too bad.
It is knitted sideways so I had no idea what I was doing I just followed the instructions in the pattern an after a while I could see what I was doing.

I read the instructions in the pattern link of how to graft the stitches for the seam on the sleeves and it made no sense to me so off I went to YouTube and found this
Grafting Garter Stitch

That made sense and as I worked on the technique I soon found it was not as difficult as I had thought.

So now I have learnt to use markers something I had not done before and it has opened up a lot more patterns that I could try as well.
Knitting short rows is easy and again it means I will be able to do more patterns that call for short rows and not be put off by it.
Grafting garter stitch was the one thing I was dreading but again after seeing it done I was able to do it myself.

It is not the usual style of cardigan that I go for as I tend to go for longer ones and knitted in the traditional way that means a lot of sewing. This pattern was easy to use and the instructions nice and clear. As it is knitted entirely in Garter stitch it was a nice easy project to do whilst watching TV, no fiddly reversing rows for the right or left side or sleeves, that always get me in a muddle and I have to be extra careful or I make a mess of things.

Now that I have tried this pattern I will have a look at other cardigan patterns that are also knitted in one piece. I may end up with a couple of cardigans that will serve me well for early Spring and Autumn and even in the Winter months that I will have made myself.