Take It from the Top, Sibella
My new favorite cardigan.
This one was on the needles for two summers. I bought the yarn from the first ever Jyväskylä Knit Fest in July 2016, and finished it just before the 2017 festivities.
I'd had my eye on Carrie Bostick Hoge's Sibella Cardigan ever since the pattern came out. What stopped me from casting on was one major flaw (in my book) in the pattern: it's worked bottom up.
The original is knitted in a beautiful dusty blue color. Me being me, it's not a wonder I'd end up making it in a much more intense colorway. These three deep teal skeins just begged to come home with me from Knitfest 2016. I remember browsing through Ravelry and setting my mind about the perfect pattern: Sibella it was, only I'd try to convert it to top down.
Turns out, it wasn't that hard — I basically just read the pattern backwards. Except for the lace. I've struggled with reversing lace before and in the end had to do exactly what I did with the Monkey socks: not bother. The lace is beautiful either way and I really can't tell if it's upside down or not.
In addition to converting the cardigan to top-down knitting, I added short-row shaping to the neckline and some extra waist shaping. There are some really cute details in the pattern, like the garter ridges between lace repeats at the yoke that are mirrored with garter ridges just above the ribbing, both on the hem and cuffs.
On Ravelry: Top-Down Sibella
Pattern: Sibella Cardigan by Carrie Bostick Hoge, from Madder Anthology 1
Yarn: approx. 3 skeins/1030 meters/1125 yards of Handu Ilun Sinkku, superwash merino singles
Needles: 3.5 mm for ribbing, 4.0 mm otherwise
Photos by the talented Neulisti who's just as skilled behind the camera as she is in front of it.
