Hello friends! Sarah here with an Ojai Hooray Cardigan update!
In my last post, I talked about picking up for the button bands. Since then I spent some relaxing time knitting an oasis of 2×2 rib!

(By the way, have you ever seen a more luscious green? The more of this sweater I get knit up, the more bananas I am about the colour. Every year it seems like the CSA yarn share dye options are more gorgeous!)
About halfway through the button band knitting, I took a break and knit the sleeves. I’ll explain why in just a minute. First, sleeves!
This sweater is a top down raglan construction. So, the shoulders and yoke are knit first, and then stitches for the body and sleeves are separated. When it’s time to knit the sleeves, those stitches are ready and waiting!

The Hooray Cardigan has shorter sleeves – sort of between bracelet and ¾ length. I adjusted the sleeve length to fit my actual arm instead of the pattern measurements because I’m really, really short! This was easy to do – I just cut out length from sections without any shaping. Looking at other knitters’ project notes on Ravelry gave me the idea for another small modification: instead of working the sleeves in reverse stockinette, I just turned them inside out and worked regular stockinette. I knit faster than I purl, so it made the sleeves much quicker!

The sleeves also have deep ribbing at the cuffs.

The pattern suggests two different finishing techniques for the sleeve and button band edgings. I chose attached i-cord, which I am kind of bonkers about. It looks SO tidy and clean! I’m especially pleased with the attached i-cord edge on the sleeves, because it’s seamless.
Using a combination of this Purlbee tutorial and this Knitty article, I cast on provisionally, knit the attached i-cord bind off around the sleeve edge, and then kitchenered the two ends of the i-cord together! Voila, seamless edging!


Both sleeves finished! HOORAY!

Now, why did I take a break from the button band? I put it on pause because it was time to add buttonholes, and I like to choose my buttons before I decide on buttonhole placement. That way, I can place the buttonholes based on the size and number of buttons I choose, instead of having to narrow my button choices to work with existing buttonholes.
Here in Victoria, we have the BEST button store, the Button & Needlework Boutique. They have an amazing selection of gorgeous buttons, and I always have a hard time choosing! I very often go with buttons that match the colour of my sweater, but sometimes contrasting colours or textures catch my eye.

I narrowed it down to about five different buttons, some contrasting, some matching, and all made out of different materials.

Matching or contrasting? I think I’ll wait until my next post to show you which ones I bought!

By then, I should have a whole sweater to show you. Whoa.
Sarah hangs out with her cat, drinks a lot of tea, sometimes eats amazing muffins for breakfast and knits as much as possible in beautiful Victoria, BC.