Comfort Fade Cardi – Finished

You may remember that when I first started this sweater, I really struggled with the yarn choices. I started off wanting to use Malabrigo Rios, couldn’t get the colors I liked, then switched to Madelinetosh Farm Twist. I kept having to order additional colors to get the fade to work. If I added a few more colors, I probably have enough yarn to make at least two more sweaters.

The Yarn – Madelinetosh Farm Twist:

Madelinetosh Farm Twist – For so many years, Madelinetosh has been my go to yarn. I’ve loved it – love the colors, loved the variety of weight/twist. But lately, I’ve had trouble with fading and knots in skeins. They will not put the weight on their skeins and that makes it hard to compare yarns when wanting to substitute. There are always going to be overweight and underweight skeins. I weigh each skein before starting and document the weight. I’ve heard their explanation as to why they no longer add the weight to the descriptions but it still doesn’t make sense to me. Overall, I’ve just fallen out of love with Madelinetosh yarns. I’ll still use and love what I have in my stash but I’ll only buy their yarns when I don’t have other good options.

Having said all that . . I used Madelinetosh Farm Twist for this sweater and I loved knitting with it. I did wash the darkest green before using it but I’m still not sure it isn’t going to fade some. For this pattern, it won’t matter since fade is the name of the game!

The yarn is 100% merino wool, which I much prefer over superwash wool, except for socks. The yarn feels so much like a good quality cotton yarn. I have no idea how it will wear but it was a joy to knit with.

It will look much better once it has been soaked and blocked, which isn’t going to happen til I get home. That is not to say I’m not going to wear it until I get home. There were people with sweaters and jackets on this morning. It was about 62 degrees when I was out dealing with the car.

The Pattern – Comfort Fade Cardi

The pattern can be found here.

It is a super easy pattern. Anyone with a bit of knitting experience should be able to knit this pattern without any problems.

DK weight yarn is my favorite sweater weight yarn. For my taste, it is so wearable. Not too heavy, not so light that it feels fragile.

I love making short rows. This is the back side of the collar where I picked up the stitches and, using short rows, created the shawl type collar.

Mods I made:

• The pattern calls for four colors. I used five.
• The pattern calls for the reverse stockinette (wrong side) to be the right side but I made the stockinette side the right side.
• The front bands and collar, according to the pattern, are also reverse stockinette. I was tempted to do a ribbed front band and collar but went with the pattern and did the reverse stockinette. I did reduce the number of short rows so the collar wasn’t quite as deep as the pattern showed. I did 8 repeats of the short row sections (instead of 13) and instead of knitting to the last W&T, I knitted 2 stitches past the last W&T.
• Also on the front bands/collar, I used three of the colors instead of all five of the colors.
• Looking at the pattern and the pictures, I decided the sleeves were going to be a bit tight on my granny arms so I added 6 extra stitches to my sleeves and reduced them down to the recommended number.

Recommendation:

If you’ve never done a fade project, one thing I learned with both my recent fade projects: Don’t try to make the fade too extreme! I started with an almost white yarn. The Horn colorway is barely off white with just a few flecks. I wanted to fade all the way to the dark green. That’s a lot of variation in color when it comes to blending. I think if I had started with a very light green, it would have been easier to get to that dark green.

Of course, if you’re planning a fade and you’re seeing the yarn in person, that probably makes it a zillion times easier than trying to do it online.

Conclusion:

I love this sweater! I will be anxious to see how the yarn wears since this is the first time I’ve used Madelinetosh Farm Twist. The pattern is great. It’s just so wearable. I wouldn’t mind using this pattern for a solid colored sweater. There are so many patterns I want to make but I believe there will be another of these in my future.