This week I cast on for Killybegs, a wintery cardigan knit in thick, warm tweedy Donegal Aran Tweed.  The sweater, designed by Carol Feller, has great shaping details.  It uses a honeycomb cable pattern in an interesting configuration to do the shaping.  The waist is created, not by paired sets of decreases and increases, but by using the honeycomb cable to draw the fabric in.  Here is a photo:

The cardigan is knit in one piece bottom-up, and uses an I-cord cast on.  Casting on over 160 stitches using the cumbersome (but very pretty) I-cord cast-on takes a long time.  In the photo below, you can see the edge it creates, which is very finished and won’t roll.

The honeycomb cables arise in columns before branching out.  I finished three of these cable repeats over the week, producing about 4 inches of fabric; considering that the fronts and back are knit in one piece, this is a fair bit of knitting.  Pretty, huh?

Wait.  Look again.  Look closer.  Can you see something wrong?  No?  Maybe this will help.

On the left is my Killybegs.  On the right  is the swatch that I knit of the honeycomb cable pattern.  I have knit three pattern repeats; can you tell that the first two repeats are too small?  The third is the correct size, as you can see by comparing to the swatch.  For some inexplicable reason, I seem to have been incapable of reading the pattern, incapable of counting, and incapable of seeing what was right before my eyes.  For a whole week.  What did I do?  Rip!  This morning I frogged the whole thing and started over.  How frustrating!

And on another note, Emma and I have been working hard on our upcoming series highlighting vintage knits made by my mother and grandmother.  We had hoped to unveil the first segment today, but have had to deal with two obstacles.  First, there is a lot of work involved and we fell short of time.  Second, Emma has absconded to Berlin, where she will remain for a summer filled with adventure and fun.  As this blog is a very collaborative effort, Emma and I will have to learn to deal with communicating remotely.   But never fear, compared to following a pattern (ahem), it will be a piece of cake.