DIY: Knit Foxglove Cardigan by Kate Davies

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I knit myself the Foxglove Cardigan, a design by Kate Davies in her book Yokes.

From start to finish, I was able to make this cardigan in under a month. I knit the body and sleeves in just over three weeks. Then it took me another week to weave in ends, steek it, and knit the buttonbands.

The original Foxglove Cardigan has beautiful colours, so I used the same colours as the pattern suggested. The yarn is Jamieson & Smith 2 ply Jumper Weight, a famous Shetland wool yarn that I’ve been wanting to knit with for a while. The main colour is 134, which is a lovely aubergine colour. I knit myself size 7 using 2 mm needles. I used 13 skeins of the main colour (instead of the suggested 12), with just a couple metres to spare when I finished the buttonbands! The cardigan turned out a bit big, probably since my gauge is so loose. I always size down my needles by a whole millimetre to 2.0 mm, and I thought I got gauge, but I guess it was still a bit big.

I found the shaping of this cardigan quite interesting. You knit it bottom-up, and the hip shaping was rather sharp on me and it flares out a bit too much. However, once you add the sleeves, you start with raglan shaping before getting to the yoke. Then the yoke and neck include circular yoke shaping.

The yoke uses three contrast colours. The natural-coloured yoke background is 202. Although the pattern suggests using two balls of the 202, I used less than one! That’s okay, since I plan on using this yarn for other fair isle knitting projects. The two green colours were 29 mix and 24, although I could easily have used just one of those greens. The foxglove flower colour is 43, a lovely rich magenta.

I used crochet to reinforce my steek. Jamieson & Smith is the famously ‘sticky’ yarn that designers say will not unravel. However, I felt nervous that the yarn would still unravel, so I crocheted the reinforcement. Then I also sewed it with my sewing machine before cutting the steek, just in case!

I knit just 10 rows of the buttonbands as I was worried I’d run out of yarn. Luckily, I finished the buttonbands with just a few metres to spare!

To space the buttons, I knit three stitches. Then I added twelve 2-stitch buttonholes, each with 12 stitches between them. This way, I was able to make sure they were evenly spaced. I chose twelve pearlescent blue-green buttons from my stash. The button colour is similar enough to the greens of the colourwork, and complements the design nicely. As a finishing touch, I added a woven ribbon to cover the cut steeks on the inside of the cardigan. To make sure that the sewing stayed invisible on the outside, I handsewed it all.

The pattern is only available as part of the Yokes collection, either in hard copy or ebook form.