Whisper Cardi Fail
After finishing up the knitting on my Starry Night Shawl, I decided that a summer cardi would be a good next project. I purchased a couple balls of Elann Peruvian Baby Lace Merino a few years ago on a whim as part of a bigger order. I decided to use it to cast on a Whisper Cardigan so that I would end up with a lightweight sweater that I could squeeze into a corner of my purse if needed.
I did some swatching and came up with 3.75 mm needles for the Whisper Cardi. I started working on the first sleeve on dpns last week. The more I looked at the knitted product the more unhappy I was with it. I took a step back for the weekend and thought about it a bit. I decided that the yarn is very nice, but it isn’t very elastic and it seems really thin. This was my first venture into knitting with lace-weight yarn, so I wasn’t sure if it was just the nature of lace-weight or if it was this particular yarn. While I was at my parents for dinner on Sunday night, I asked if I could see some of my Mom’s lace-weight to compare. The skeins she dug out to show me also contained alpaca, and they too were not very bouncy, but they were a bit thicker than the Baby Lace Merino.
So I’ve decided that I’m not enjoying knitting this pattern with this yarn, so I’m frogging it and calling it little more than a failed swatch. I would like to attempt this sweater again, but next time I’ll use a 100% wool lace-weight yarn, maybe Knit Picks Shadow, and see how that goes. I might knit the sleeves flat and then seam them up if the dpns are still not making me happy with different yarn.