Knitting For My Big Girl

Today is my daughter Eve's birthday.  My baby is 22!  How did that happen!

Lucky girl has gone to Barcelona for the weekend with her boyfriend.  I'm sure they'll have a great time.

For her birthday Eve asked me to knit her my Kate cardigan.  Here is the original cardigan I made back in 2014.

I love this cardigan, and so does Eve.  Whenever she's home, she always borrows it.  So when she was home at Christmas I offered her the cardigan to take back to London with her.  Instead, she asked me to knit her a Kate cardigan of her own in exactly the same colours, and it would be her birthday gift.  No problem.

Now I have to confess that I'm rather a selfish knitter.  I'll happily knit most things but I'm more enthusiastic if I'm knitting it for myself than if I have to knit for someone else.

It would have been tempting to wrap up the existing cardigan and pretend it was a newly knitted version!  She wouldn't have suspected a thing, would she!  But no, I started off in January, all keen, knowing I had plenty of time to finish it.  But then, other projects kept popping up and distracting me.  And so March came and I realised I didn't have as much time as I thought.  All I can say is, it's a good job she's gone to Barcelona this weekend and doesn't come back to Liverpool until next week because I only just finished it this morning.

Here it is, although at this stage it hasn't been soaked and blocked.

Since taking the photos, it's been soaked so all the stitches have nicely relaxed and it's now drying.  So it will definitely be ready for Eve's visit home.  Full details of the project are on my Ravelry project page, here.

And just to prove that I didn't cheat, here are the two cardigans together!

I'm going to link this cardigan with Linda's Crafty Corner Stash Busting Party and I'm pleased to say that the cardigan has reduced my stash by 317g.  Have a good weekend. Bye for now.