This project has quite the backstory, so I’ll get started to get you up to speed. Back in 2011 I bought 2 batts of Texeler wool, each a whopping 200 g. One was cyclamen pink, the other more pink & purple. I spun each of these into singles, and twined them into an (on average) 2-ply DK-weight yarn. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the resulting yarn to show you.
Anyway, I decided to use this yarn to make myself a Mr Greenjeans cardigan, which is a pattern by Amy Swenson, available for free on Knitty. When I started the project, it was just after my youngest was born, and I was still breastfeeding. I expected to lose some weight because of that, so I aimed at a size to end up eventually with a garment with approx. 0 cm / 0″ of ease. Things going as they go, I didn’t finish the project until sometime in 2013. By then I had lost so much baby weight that my mr Greenjeanshad a whopping 14 cm / 5.6” of positive ease! Nevertheless, I put it in my closet and wore it from time to time.
Below you can see how I wore it at the time. I didn’t even make the effort to sew a button on, I just closed it with a shawl pin.
Fast-forward to July 2021: Looking back, I really haven’t worn this garment that much. You see, it turned out to be very warm. So warm, in fact, that I only wore it on the coldest days of the year. That combined with the 3/4th length sleeves made it rather unpractical to wear for me. But, I realized that the pink yarn I bought in Greece a couple of years ago, is a lovely match with this cardigan!
So, long story short, I hatched the plan to fix my mr Greenjeans by undoing the bind-off, work in stockinette until the hand spun is finished and then redo the cuffs with the pink yarn. And I made pictures of what I did!
Fixing my mr Greenjeans step by step
- Undoing the bind-off and unraveling the cabled cuffs.
The original yarn tail was, of course, woven in. However, with some smart and careful snipping, I managed to unravel the bind-off and then rip back the knitting to the point where the stockinette stopped.
- Re-knitting the hand spun yarn.
I put the stitches on a tiny circular needle, and continued the stockinette section of the sleeve until I couldn’t work another round. And yes, I kept track of the number of rounds to be able to duplicate it for the other sleeve.
- No more round possible!
I made a total of 18 extra rounds of stockinette in the hand spun yarn.
- The next step consisted of re-knitting the cabled cuff in the somewhat matching pink yarn.
Here I made 29 rounds to arrive at a cozy long sleeve length.
- Repeat steps 1 to 4 for the other sleeve!
And this is the result of foxing my mr Greenjeans!
As you can see, I found a button in the very same pink as the contrast yarn, and actually sewed it on. To tie everything together, I also did some slip stitching along all outer edges of the cardigan. In my next tutorial, I’ll show you how to work slip stitches as an edge treatment!
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