The patchwork sweater

So the "Harry Styles Cardigan" has been sweeping the Internet for a few months. I honestly think the thing is kinda.... not that attractive, so I didn't pay much attention to it. However, I did see this girl's videos on the Internet about making her own, and then doing a crowdsourced one, and hers looked a whole lot cuter than the original. So that's been my "holiday sweater" (har) for 2020, albeit not Christmassy. 

I have a lot of chunky weird "art" handspun yarn I haven't really done much of anything with over the years, so I thought this would be a good project to use that up on. And I used up probably 90% of it, which is really cool. It's a good thing I tended to use the same sorts of colors so they went together!

I originally went off Liv's pattern, as it were, for this rather than the original cardigan. That one does 5x5 squares, hers does 4x4, which I much preferred--more variety, easier to make squares block to 4x4, etc.

I did them in size 10 needles and however many stitches/rows it took to get 4x4 squares--usually casting on 14 to 16 stitches, depending on how thick/thin that particular skein was spun. 

Around the 11 minute mark she talks about what she did for hers. 

She has a 2x6 for each front of the cardigan, but I did 3x6 because I have the Tits o' Doom. Otherwise I followed her pattern of 4x6 for the arms and 5x6 for the back. 

And then after sewing the fronts and sides together and doing pinning, the sleeves were way too long and I had to remove two rows of squares off them. 

I ended up reappointing them onto the bottoms of the front and back pieces, and creating two secret pockets on the front.

Those pockets hold my new giant cell phone very nicely, or anything else of length. It's the pink and hot pink/teal patch together as one pocket. 

I had already planned to have two pockets on the sides, which I made out of the yarn where I didn't have enough left to make 4x4 squares out of them. I ended up sewing them in at an angle and pinning them down a bit on the seams, so things won't fall out.

 

I whipstitched around the edges of the pockets once both sides were together to close it all together. The side pockets pretty much fit like a hoodie. 

So I have 3x7 on the fronts, 4x4 on the sleeves, and 5x7 on the back, in the end. 

As for the ribbing:

On the sleeves, I needed to shrink down the edges of them so they fit more human-like (my arms are about 18 inches long, so a 20 inch long sleeve did not work, sigh), so I did some decreases. 

1. Pick up 14 stitches per each square, for 28 inches total, with size 10 needles.
2. Knit in 2x2 rib on row 2.
3. Switch to size 8 needles, 2x2 rib again.
4. [p2tog, k2] pattern on all stitches on next row.
5. [p2tog, k1] pattern on all stitches on next row.
6. Continue in p1, k1 ribbing until there are 2 inches of ribbing, bind off. 

(Sadly, that's the one thing I'm not happy with with these because the length will be fine most of the time, and then somehow my wrists still end up sticking out too much when I start typing, once the whole thing was sewn together and done. Darn it. I am out of that yarn so I might have to fudge something to make them longer or whatever.)

On the button band/front ribbing area:

1. Pick up 16 inches per each square with size 10 needles, staring on the front from the bottom towards the top. 
2. I planned on using one inch-ish sized buttons AND I was running low on the yarn I wanted to use for the band, so I only did 1.5 inches of 2x2 ribbing.
3. Since the top square on the front of the jacket was a little choke-y to put button band on, I did cast on all the way up, but I decreased by 4 sts every time I was going back down the buttonband from top to bottom, including the first full row. 
4. On row 8 (going from top to bottom again), I bound off. 
5. For the button holes (hah), I put safety pins where I wanted to put the buttons (basically at the top/bottom of each square) and around those areas, on row 3 I p2tog'd on the designated rib area. On row 4, I cast on another stitch where the hole was to get it back to 2 sts in the ribbing again. I have had enough issues with buttonholes in knitting that I just make a tiny hole and then stretch it to have the buttons go through. 

I decided to use all of my odd large buttons that either have one match or no matches on this thing, because what the heck. 

I ended up pinning/sewing down the collar on the top square since it was too high up/choking-ish had I included it for real in the buttonband.

Since I was running low on the matching yarns, I just single crocheted around the edge of the neck and the bottom of the sweater rather than adding more anything else. 

Anyway, now it's done:

It's very large and warm, turned into more of a coat, and weighs like 50 pounds to carry around while finishing it off. 

Update, a few days later: Okay, the too-short sleeves REALLY bothered me, so I took out the original ribbing and did 2 inches of ribbing in size 10 DPN's with the leftover yarn from the butterfly sweater, then did the same decrease thing as I did before on the sleeves. It looks a lot better.

 

Also my mother complained that i "just stuck a wig on my head" for the last shot :P