Lacy Little Cardigan

I bought a copy of 60 Quick Baby Knits, and I wanted to knit the “Lace Motif Cardigan”. However, I’ve only been knitting for a year, and I have yet to venture out of the realm of the top-down Raglan sweater, with no seaming (and the Lace Motif Cargigan DEFINITELY calls for seaming!).
Soooooo….. I decided to alter the pattern. I used the basic measurements of the 18-24 month size of the “Cardigan Rose” pattern, and added in the Lace Motif. Here are my alterations:

• Cast on 72 stitches, placed markers as directed and knitted in garter stitch until I had 4 rows of purl bumps.
• I knit a 5 st garter band, and then a 2 stitch “spacer” before starting the lace chart (row 11 for the left side, row 1 for the right side - so that the pattern would be mirrored down the front) and worked a simple buttonhole (k2, yo, k2tog, k1) in the 5 stitch garter band (instead of a 7 stitch as called for in the pattern) on the left hand side.
• Continued in stockinette and lace pattern (increasing at markers with a simple m1, sm, m1) until there were 6 garter ridges after the buttonhole. Then I placed another buttonhole (k2, yo, k2tog, k1)…. I ended up doing this twice so that I had three buttonholes (spaced 6 garter ridges apart) on the front of the sweater.
• Followed the cardigan pattern for putting aside sleeve stitches, etc (omitting the garter ridges worked into the body of the Cardigan Rose pattern) and after achieving the desired length of 10.25”, I ended with 4 garter stitch ridges (and bound off knitwise on a purl row to make the bind off blend in).
• I went back and picked up the sleeves (picked up 2 additonal stitches under the arm, and decreased them on the next round), k6 rows in stockinette, and then alternated knit and purl rows until I had a series of 4 garter ridges, and bound off purlwise.
• I added a simple crochet border to the bottom/sleeves of the sweater as follows: 1 sc in first st, * ch 3, 1 dc in first ch, skip 2 sts , 1 sc in next st , repeat from-* across.

The only tricky part was remembering that the lace pattern was not the same for both sides of the cardigan (so that it would be mirrored). Also, with the Raglan shaping, there are not 12 stitches available for the lace panel at the start of the sweater…(you keep adding available stitches everytime you increase at the marker). This worked out fine because the lace chart does not “do” anything in these missing stitches until further down the cardigan, and at this point you have increased enough that there are 12 stitches available for the lace panel (just barely, though, lol!)

I also knit her a matching headband using this pattern from KnitPicks (the Amy Lynn Headband).

Here is the finished product, after blocking, modeled by the lovely K :)