FO Number 2 - Little Birds on a Yoke

This sweater is a bit difficult to write about because all the pieces for it fell together so neatly it's almost like it knit itself. There was no swatching, sketching or working out the math beforehand, I just cast on with the thought that it would all work out. 

The germ of the idea started something like this..... I'd been thinking about knitting another tangled yoke and had purchased the gray felted tweed from my local LYS.  At the same time obsessively checking the finished Little Bird cardigans made by other ravelry users.  A beautiful design that would not work with my bust/waist configuration, but the birds were perfect.  Then the idea just popped into my head, why not knit a tangled yoke and just substitute the cable for some colorwork birds.  Why not knit the whole thing in the round to make stranding really simple and then learn how to steek. Why not cast on Right Now!!!

All the garter stitch rib in the tangled yoke pattern was replaced with the beaded ribbing specified in the Little birds pattern.  This changed the number of cast on stitches for all the pieces to be divisible by 3. The body size is basically the size 34 in Eunny Jang's pattern with about an extra inch of ease and the 8 steek stitches added. There are 26 birds on the yoke, 13 facing in each direction with a little geometric shape on the center back.  (An egg would have been better but needed too many stitches)

Rowan Felted Tweed turned out to be a good choice for a first steek. I followed Eunny Jang's hand sewn steek instructions and then zig zigged with my sewing machine alongside the hand stitched line.  The extra zig zig probably wasn't needed because the felted tweed didn't unravel past the hand stitched line.   The cardigan was then finished off with a double thickness button band and some blue wooden buttons that almost match the birds.

Other than the button band concerns that I blogged about on the 25th this cardigan feels almost perfect.  The tubular cast on for the ribbing looks excellent, the fit is great, and the little birds make me smile every time I wear it.