Karen’s post on cardigans this week has me thinking again about a subject I’m often thinking of these days: the dearth of handknit cardigans in my life. I wear cardigans all the time, but they’re mostly store-bought fine gauge knits, and I’d love to change that. While I’ve knit a few cardigans, none of them make it into totally regular rotation in my wardrobe. My first was this little cropped number, the Hexacomb cardigan by Katie Himmelberg, originally published in Interweave’s spring 2008 issue:

The resulting cardigan was super cute, and I liked my color choices (heck, I still love to wear grey and green all the time), but despite that I rarely wore it. I think I wore it two or three times before deciding to give it away to a friend who commented on really loving it (she ended up wearing it way more than I did, so I’m happy it found a good home). There were a few reasons for this. The body of Hexacomb is knit in one piece, which meant long rows that took me forever to knit, and between having to then knit and seam the sleeves into place and pick up button bands, I procrastinated a lot. This little cardigan took me about ten months to finally finish – it felt like a neverending project! At any rate, it left my wardrobe and took my handknit cardigan total back to zero.

Other cardigans I’ve knit for myself include the prototype for Elskling, which was knit for my wedding, my delightfully oversized Michiyo cardigan, my Faire du Vélo bike sweater, and Svalbard. Svalbard is the closest thing to an everyday cozy cardigan, and it gets worn all the time because I love it, but I find myself thinking often these days of something a little more traditional in construction that’s perfect for wearing around the house whether I’m working or spending a lazy Sunday reading. A search of my Ravelry favorites yields many potential options, but this time I want to take my time choosing a sweater to knit. Given my history with cardigans, I want to make sure I’m choosing a sweater that I’ll want to reach for all the time once it’s done – rather than choosing a pattern because I think it’s beautiful/intriguing/fun to knit. I think this kind of decision-making can be one of a knitter’s greatest challenges.

So I’ve been asking myself some questions: what do I want in an everyday wear-around-the-house cardigan? Ideally: something long in length, with button bands and buttons, and in a perfect world, pockets. Here are some options I’m considering:

Clockwise from top left: Edith by Pam Allen, from her new Home collection; Picea by Andrea Rangel; Aureus by Michele Wang; and Chocolate Stout by Thea Colman.

There are a lot of features I’m interested in here: length, pockets, buttons. In all cases there are modifications I would make, but then, freedom to make modifications is the beauty of knitting something yourself! Still, as great as these options are, and against my better judgment, I can’t stop thinking about this number:

You may remember it from the Fred Perry controversy of 2013. Even though the “pattern” isn’t truly a viable pattern, I’m still in love with this sweater. Given the incompleteness of the pattern file and its lack of sleeves (interestingly, the PDFs are all still accessible on the Fred Perry server), this would involve drawing out some charts for myself and doing a lot of math – basically reverse-engineering the thing. In a way, that’s a little bit appealing; it would be a way to put my designer brain to work without having to come up with a cardigan design on my own, and I could use a little hand-holding in what seems to be a difficult area for me (cardigans). But it also seems a little crazy when there are so many wonderful cardigan patterns out there. I’d like to sit on it a little bit and see if my interest is holding – I think my fixation on it has something to do with the Amanda KAL that Fringe has been putting on for the last several months (aka the #fringeandfriendsknitalong).

What about you? Is there an obvious hole in your handknit wardrobe? How do you tackle that?