Deconstruct, Reconstruct, Arrggh!

 Its now February

I loved the texture of last month's dishcloth that it had to be February's marker.

I edited my last post to add that I had to unravel my blue cardigan, so here's the story.

I was pleased that I got to finishing one sleeve and was set to pick up stitches for the second sleeve and tried on the cardigan. The sleeve felt really tight which seemed odd as the sleeves on my brown cardigan were roomy.  I used King Cole Fashion Aran for both.  I compared both and found the sleeve with on the blue one narrower.

I looked at the circular needles, which are plain grey Pony circulars and put the needle through the needle gauge and found to my horror that I knitted with 4.5mm not 5mm needles.  Below is the difference in stitches from the neckband downwards.  

The construction of the cardigan is that its started with a garter neckband, knit the top row,  then pick up stitches along one side of the neckband and bottom row from the provisional cast on.  From there the increases are done for the raglan shaping.

So there was only one this for it to unravel the yarn, which I did yesterday afternoon. I watched You Tube which kept me amused while doing this job, so below is a deconstructed cardigan body.

A couple of evenings ago I started another neckband and last night I started re-knitting the cardigan with the correct size needles and I checked my tension and its correct!

Moral of the story is to double check needle size and keep checking the tension.  I shouldn't have taken this for granted!  I may not have a cardigan by the end of February, but it will be well on the way.