Over the last few days I’ve been working on a cardigan that I started knitting a few months ago. The yarn is Donegal by Lang and the pattern…well, the pattern is a bit of a mystery.

I saw the finished cardigan displayed on a mannequin in one of the yarn stores in Zürich last year – and loved it. It has a really nice fake cable pattern that I hadn’t seen before and a scooped neck. That’s about as much as I remember. The pattern came for free when you bought the yarn, so I didn’t get a chance to check it out first – and to be honest when I see something I like, I honestly don’t give the pattern a second thought – it’s really just a means to an end.

Except this one isn’t. It’s a self-produced pattern by the yarn store. It’s in German. It uses all sorts of abbreviations that might as well be in Chinese. I am winging it all big time.

I set out blindly knitting because I didn’t really understand the hand-written and badly photocopied last page of the pattern which told me how to do the fake cables. But before I got to that point there was a good amount of nice uneventful stocking stitch where nothing could go wrong. When I made it to the cable section I played around for a bit and finally worked out what I had to do. Not so tricky after all.

Now I’ve finished the back and almost two fronts and the sleeves look understandable, although I have no recollection of how the sleeves looked made-up. Why, oh why didn’t I just take a photo in the store?

The sleeves will get made – not an issue. But then my problems will really start – I have had a quick glance at the instructions for finishing off the cardigan – the neckline, the buttonholes…..you get the drift…..AND I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANY OF IT. Not even a little bit. It’s gibberish. Which is a bit worrying seeing as how I’ve done all this knitting and I would actually like to wear this at some point in time.

Two options are available – one is to see if the not amazingly friendly ladies in the yarn store will take the time to work it out with me 🙂 , if they even understand it all themselves….. the second is to beg for a rescue mission from Mel, who I have no doubt is better at these things than me…

So how about it Mel….what can I bribe you with?

Helen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 at 11:24 am and is filed under Knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.