Electricardi FO

Is it weird to do a blog post on a finished object? Or is it an excuse just to share the hilarious photos I tried to take of myself whilst modelling the garment. 

 This is my completed Electricardi by disco stitch and I really like it. The pattern is written so you use and aran or worsted weight for the body, then a super chunky for the main colour of the sleeves and then multi strands of different weights of yarn to get to super chunky for the contrast colour on the sleeve. Me being me however and not paying attention when I signed up to test knit this cardi I was like 

     "I will use so much yarn in this" 

and made my weights up using strands of 4ply to get the correct weight/gauge of yarn.  I feel that if I had followed the actual yarn suggestions my sleeves wouldn't be so heavy/ droopy, it does, however, mean its super cosy, so perfect for the colder weather (hello July) 

So to get gauge for the body I ended up with 5 strands of fingering on a 7mm needle (guys my knitting is looser than a wizards sleeve, DONT JUDGE!) and then the sleeves ended up being a mighty 8 strands of fingering with a 9mm needle. 

Now a funny story about gauge, I know I'm loose, teehee, and know that normally I have to come down a full needle size managed it pretty much with the body, boom, but the sleeves, oh my word those sleeves. Initially, I swatched for the body and the sleeve at the same time right at the start. but I could not for the life of me get the gauge for the sleeve. I ended up on a 12mm needle with 12 strands of 4ply and my gauge was still too small. I had a huff and thought bugger it, I will do the body and come back to the sleeves when it was time to start (had it not been a test knit I maybe would have wung it). So I get to the sleeves and I'm like AHHHHH as I just can't figure it out. So after a bit of googling on how to measure gauge on brioche, I discovered that

      you only count the knit stitches!!!!

am I the only one that didn't know this? so thankfully I managed to get gauge and only had to wrangle 8 strands. 

I realise I was a test knitter for this pattern but I can honestly say that it is such a beautifully written pattern, I'm not 100% sure if id choose to do sleeves of that size for my fist brioche project however if you are one of those jump right in folks then id say go for it. the brioche is in the round which I think is the easy way. I will also link a video I found helpful for knitting two colour brioche in the round. 

I'm really glad I did the body using multiple strands of grey fingering weight as they weren't all solid greys, I had some easyknits in there that was beautifully grey and lots of jewel rainbow, some rusty ferret signature grey and a colour, and also some plain grey, when you look at the body it is so stunning to look at. like a crystal with lots of rainbows in its prisms. 

I think if I were to reknit it I would stick to a plain ole super chunky for the sleeves just to reduce that weight down for more casual wearing as the one I have now is definitely a statement cardi and if I went out (HA!) wearing it, it would end up in my Chinese food! 

Should I give this pattern a rating? I feel like that would be weird. I would recommend this pattern if you want something a bit more flamboyant in your wardrobe, for an event or for sitting at the computer working. Definitely a winter garment and fairly quick. You can also go a bit mental with the colour combinations. 

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