Pam Alison Knits

Yes, Cinderella, you shall go to the ball!

And there, in the merest blink of an eye, it’s a finished object! I cannot believe that such a basic cardigan took me three and a half months to knit. It’s lamentable. Even worse, it’s the first garment I’ve actually completed to a wearable standard all year. My knitting game is at an all-time low – I’m like all those British sports-people who promise so much and consistently under-deliver.

This garment tried my patience right down to the finish-line. It wasn’t an easy task at all to choose the buttons because the wool is a decidedly unusual colour. Everything is either too pink, too red, too orange, too dark, too light… and that’s without having to get the right size! I was spoilt for choice at Anglian Fashion Fabrics in Norwich. I took a photo of about half the shelf of pink buttons, and there were two units each with 5 shelves as packed as this in all the colours you can imagine.

It could have been a fairly simple task, because I chose four designs within the first ten minutes which were contenders. Three were ridiculously expensive, and the fourth was perfect, except that I needed seven buttons and there were only five in the tube. I then spent half an hour trying to find something that suited the yarn, my budget, and my taste, and kept coming back to that one option where there wern’t enough buttons. I asked if they had any more hidden away and they said no, but they could order them – not the right answer because I could order them myself if I hadn’t wanted them there and then. I fell back on my traditional cop-out: I would buy one “focal point” button, the five perfect ones in the tube and they could snip the one off the top of the tube to make it up to six. I chose a suitably blingy single button.

The trouble is, when I sewed that one in place it was so rough it wouldn’t work with knitted fabric at all. Back to the drawing-board or, to be precise, the button-box where I eventually settled on using one of the Britannia buttons hoarded by my dad. It looks fine, is the right size, and has sentimental value – all admirable qualities for a humble button to achieve. The cardigan is now destined for a soak, a spin, and a lie on the floor whilst the knitter is destined for a soak, a spin, and a lie on the settee because it is Bank Holiday Monday.

Before I go, though, I can report some progress with the new knit. I’ve completed the decorative border and moved onto the stocking stitch part, so it will be fairly relaxing knitting from here. I enjoyed working on the border, though, because the pattern made sense to me. Sometimes I start something and it doesn’t make any sense at all which is frustrating.

I love this wool, the feel of it, the colour of it, the way it is knitting up into a pretty fabric. Typically, John Arbon have decided to change the composition of this yarn so it will be interesting to see what the new version feels like. I’m not complaining, because I got this one at sale price which makes a large project more affordable. I’m throwing down the gauntlett to myself to get this one finished by Christmas which should be easily possible if I actually work on it instead of leaving it on the side and ignoring it. Who knows, I might even manage to sneak in another small project in the next four months.