Cathbell Knits

In late 1999, I purchased 10 skeins of Patons Classic Wool and embarked on the Lady’s Tunic cable sweater pattern from Sirdar. I wasn’t new to cabling, I had made two sweaters and many hats that incorporated cables. But this pattern was different. It had several panels going on at once and a cable tree of life thingy, for crying out loud! I remember my friend looking at the pattern and cracking up heartily in disbelief. She was not laughing at the sweater, but rather at the foreign language that was the knitting pattern. T2L, T3F, MB, sl 1, what??? (I would like to add that said friend has recently taken up knitting herself. I think it took her 20 years to get over seeing this pattern!)

I was excited for the challenge and loved the woolly yarn. (Mildly scratchy by today’s standards, but after all these years, it still doesn’t pill.) However, I had recently moved to San Francisco. That was a whole new world in itself, and I guess I wasn’t the most focused at the time. I also picked up a side job knitting Ann Norling-style baby hats (Pattern #10) for a children’s store and was finding that I didn’t have a lot of time for high-concentration knitting. I knitted about 8 inches and called it a day. Or two decades.

Then, thanks to Stephen West‘s #KnitTruth campaign on Instagram, I decided to pick it up again. He had started a fun Instagram video challenge about a year or so ago inspiring people to confess their knitting secrets. After contemplating a few ideas, I remembered the cabled sweater.

I received so many nice comments after that post, that I was inspired to finish what I started. I worked on it off and on during this past fall, and I am nearing the finish line. Of course, I had a few less fussy projects going on as well for when I wasn’t quite up to the tree of life. Even so, I would have been done by now, if it wasn’t for a last minute redesign. This is a lovely pattern and very well written. There was just one issue. I was about to start the sleeves when I looked at the sleeves on the cover photo (the other photo has them tucked behind the model’s back) and saw that they were ginormous! (That was a look, I recall, one I’m happy to see has not yet been resurrected.) I adjusted the sleeves to have a more gradual decrease and therefore a slimmer look. This shaved off two inches from the armholes, so a little extra calculating and paying attention has to be done to adjust the neckline and shoulders.

So here we are in 2019, and I have a serious deadline. I hope to have the sweater completed well-before (or at least before) the cool weather rolls in next fall. I’ll be sure to post once it’s completed.