DIY: Knit Salal Cardigan by Untangling Knots

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I knit myself a Salal Cardigan, designed by Andi Satterlund of Untangling Knots. Unfortunately, just as I was finishing this cardigan, Andi Satterlund announced she was closing her pattern shop. Sorry, but the pattern is no longer available!

The Salal Cardigan is a vintage-inspired cardigan with a lace inset on the front yoke. The rest of the cardigan is stockinette with ribbed waist and cuffs. I found the construction fun and easy, with no seaming! Salal begins with a plain stockinette upper back. Then you pick up the fronts from the back’s cast-on edge and knit in a lace pattern. After the scoop neck, motifs on each front are replaced with stockinette, one by one, to form a triangular shape. You then join the fronts and back when you cast on the underarms. Then you continue the body in stockinette with waist shaping. The pattern includes three-quarter-length seamless set-in sleeves, one of my favourite sleeve construction methods. 

Like most of Andi Satterlund’s patterns, this cardigan is close-fitting with a nipped-in waist. I cast on a size Medium to fit my upper bust with the recommended amount of negative ease. Then I added a few more stitches at the underarm to fit my full bust. I also added several rows of knitting between the waist decreases to add length. Even with the few centimetres of length that I added, I could have added even more. I love the final cardigan, and am thinking of knitting another! As mentioned in the notes of another knitter on Ravelry, I used Andi Satterlund’s suggested modified stretchy bindoff for the bottom ribbing. It uses the Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off for the purl stitches, and the chain method for the knit stitches. This results in a beautiful but still stretchy edge that I love! For the buttonbands, I used just a regular bindoff.

I knit my Salal Cardigan using Norwood by Sweet Paprika Designs, a Canadian indie dyer sister duo. Norwood is their line of yarn that is completely Canadian. The Norbouillet (Rambouillet-cross) fleeces are purchased from Pine Hollow Farm in Ontario, sent to Wellington Fibres (a small mill) for spinning, before being dyed by Sweet Paprika Designs in their Montreal studio. I used Norwood to design our Tralee Hat, and I love the yarn!

Sweet Paprika Design’s Norwood yarn is quite special. Not only is it grown, milled, and dyed in Canada, it also knits up beautifully. Once worked up in the hat pattern, the yarn almost glows. The fibre has a slight sheen to it, which I think is from the Romney sheep.

The Norbouillet wool is from Pine Hollow Farm near Norwood, Ontario. The flock started in 1988 with purebred Rambouillet sheep. The farm then added Romney and one other purebred, never disclosed, to contribute specific traits and produce a fleece that Ontario mills could process. The resulting wool is soft, slightly lustrous, with a gentle drape. Once I finished the Tralee Hat, I knew I needed to knit myself a cardigan with the sweater quantity of yarn I bought the previous year.

I love the shape of the cardigan. It’s cropped enough to wear over a dress or skirt, but long enough to keep me warm. The yarn is also amazing. Even though the body is almost all stockinette, the hand-dyed colours give it depth and movement. Sometimes hand-dyed yarn can cause pooling, but that wasn’t the case with the Norwood. I found the semi-solid colour also really fun to knit.

Once you finish knitting the body and sleeves, you pick up and knit the buttonband and neck in a 1×1 rib. I used six blue buttons from my stash, and I love how they perfectly complement the blue yarn.

Read more about the Salal Cardigan on the Untangling Knots website here.