Today is the perfect day to tell you about this little cardigan I finished recently. It’s not dark and stormy in Dubai, no, but its is rather grey with the clouds covering the mighty sun plus it’s a broody Wednesday for some reason.

I am excited though. This project is a big one for me, literally and figuratively. It’s the first finished project out of my Personal Sweater Club of 2011. A little club I joined in along with my good friend, Preeti. She of the Rambling Roses blog phenomena and our very own Cardigan Queen.


Voila! It is my Dark and Stormy cardigan. So squishy. I used Tosh Vintage in Composition Book Grey. It is so amazing to work with, a bit rough while knitting but it blocked to squishy softness. I wet-blocked this cardigan so it took an entire week to dry!

After a shaky start with which row to start the charts with, it went quite smoothly after that. Thanks to tips from Thea and her group KAL plus my very own Amiras who were doing the KAL too.

Thea’s charts are amazing but to make it easier for myself, I re-did the charts and combined them so that I don’t keep going back and forth on two pages. I think my row gauge was off because I overshot the 8” marker to get 66 sleeve stitches but then I saw on project pages that this was a common problem.

Awful picture of me, but thanks to my son Patrick for this one. The shawl collar is a bit of a let down. It likes to bunch up at the neck. I thought blocking would solve this, but maybe I didn’t do enough short rows to create a wider collar. I don’t know. It is pretty awesome though and I intend to get the most out of this cardigan while the weather is still good and humidity has not enveloped Dubai yet.

Project: Grey and Broody (Raveled!)
Pattern: Dark and Stormy by Thea Colman (Baby Cocktails)
Yarn: Tosh Vintage in Composition Book Grey, 7 skeins
Needles: 4mm for the ribbing, 4.5 everywhere else
Cast on: 2 Jan 2011
Cast off: 11 Mar 2011
Notes: I had a few mods on this, all noted in the project page which is linked above.