Felix Cardigan

Felix is a jumper pattern by US designer Amy Christoffers. I like Amy's patterns, they bob in and out of my queue (one day I will knit a Larch cardigan). Anyway, this one popped up in my Ravelry pattern recommendations list, along with a cardigan variation, to which I thought "ooh!". A quick browse through my stash unearthed 4 hanks of gorgeous Berroco Alpaca Classic worsted weight yarn I had bought to knit a shrug in 2018 - Felix cardigan was happening.
I've been methodically finishing all my projects-in-progress recently, working towards a clean slate. I've found that as I've settled down and am feeling less stressed that I have less of a burning desire to cast things on "right now!". I worked this cardigan up alongside my current crochet project, the fabulous Matisse cardigan - it's always good to have some plain knitting to bundle into a bag. Matisse isn't quite as readily portable due to my working method which requires that I bring MANY colour options for the next round, but I'll share my progress/method in a separate post at some point.

Here's the finished cardigan, all ruckled up on one side, still, you can see how good it is for layering. I knit the first size as it gave me 3" positive ease (currently) although once my bust returns to its usual size this will mean the cardigan will fit with the recommended 6" of positive ease. The sleeves seemed small once I had cast on the underarm stitches and knit a few inches. I decided to cast on an extra 6 stitches (I was knitting them flat, top-down) and then I knit a small rectangular panel  to fill the subsequent gap and stitched it all together once I had cast off. Of course I only needed to do this bodging on the first sleeve, the second one had the addition of 6 stitches to the recommended underarm cast-on number right from the get-go. You can't see the fix really as I'm fortunately good at seaming stocking stitch, I quite enjoy it!

The colour is a little less vibrant in real life, it seems to have more of a pastel sherbet feel to it instead (I love it). I was a little worried it might be slightly itchy due to the alpaca content of the yarn but it's next to the skin soft for me. I'm a little fussy about yarn softness, I find that I don't wear the garments I have knit from so-called 'itchy' yarns (which many people find to be not itchy at all!), a good example here would be Istex Lettlopi which is beautiful stuff, lovely to knit with, just not as soft as Shetland wool (my favourite).

I found some pictures of my other Amy cardigans, above, Pomme de Pin, a cardigan I knit in cotton yarn and which would have been LOVELY knit with wool.

And the lovely Maxfield cardigan, finished just before Oliver was born in 2013. This pattern used a variegated yarn for the CC and was the first time I had seen a pattern I liked which used variegated yarn (I used to really dislike the look). I have to say, my preference remains with 'flat' uniform colours, although sometimes they're a little less fun to knit with.