Kyoto cardigan

It's a funny time to be writing about this one as it's very much a warm weather cardigan, and even though I had it mostly finished way back when the weather was still warm, I was unhappy with it and kind of threw it in the naughty corner. So by the time I pulled it out and did the last touches - adding the button and loop, and crocheting an edge on the collar to make it a little longer - it was really too cold to wear it. (These photos were taken the same day as those of my magnificent warm coat.)

The story of this cardigan starts way back in this post about our time in Kyoto last June. Scroll down to the latter part of the post to read about our rushed visit to Avril, where the possibilities are almost endless as they blend the yarn for you on the spot; but it took us a while to work that out, due to us not speaking Japanese!



I bought this as a kit - now that I think about it, probably my first ever kit. The pattern was only written in one size, which is apparently not uncommon in Japan. So it was lucky that the sample garment fit me quite well, though I planned to make it about 10cm shorter.

It was also written in Japanese. I am so grateful to my friend's lovely mum, who is also our former neighbour from childhood, who was happy to translate the pattern for me. Once I had the basic instructions it wasn't hard to understand the Japanese schematic method of presenting the pattern. There is a lot less written out than in a typical English-language pattern.

I was pretty sure that I achieved the right gauge, and yet my cardigan is smaller on me than the sample one was. It is wearable, but it also annoys me that the fronts hang much lower than the back. I usually blame that sort of thing on my particular proportions and posture compared to the designer - some patterns you have to tweak for your own body of course - but in this case I tried on the sample and it was fine!

Placing the button quite high helped with this a bit, and I was glad I decided to just do a loop for the button after finishing, rather than gambling on where to put the buttonhole. Honestly I'm still not sure whether I'll find this wearable. I think it looks better in the photos than in real life. But I still hope that it might stretch and grow a bit with wear, because in this case I think that would actually be an improvement.