This was a long-haul kind of knit, but SO WORTH IT! I started it in January 2016 and finished on December 31st.
Tinder has been one of my dream wardrobe pieces since it first came out. I stashed the yarn for it back in...2012 I think? It's Valley Yarns Greenwich, which was a limited edition run of 2-ply wool. It's a little too heavy for this design but I forced that round peg into a square hole! By purposely knitting it at a different gauge, that is. You can read more about that from my post when I started the project.
So as a knitting designer, why knit other people's patterns? Certainly I have enough of my own work I could focus on. Andrea Rangel calls this 'professional development' and she is SPOT. ON. Jared Flood packed lots of tricks into this that I would have never thought of on my own, like seaming the raglan seams with a half-stitch seam allowance so you wind up with a single stockinette stitch delineating those lines. I also like to see how other people write and layout their patterns.
I continued to follow the sage advice of Karen Templer and made damn sure everything was to my satisfaction with this baby. That included such fun as seaming the sides twice, when I didn't like my first go at it, and unseaming the raglan seams to reknit the sleeve caps with a different rate of decreases when they pulled too much across my shoulders the first time. It was maddening but utterly, completely, worth it.
I love this sweater. I think I've worn it at least once a week since finishing it, which is really noteworthy for me. The combination of this, plus my EmSweWeMo experiment has made me so much more aware of what I'll actually wear. There are several pieces I planned to keep that now I think I'll offer up in a future sweater auction because clearly I need more easy going long cardigans in my life. GAME CHANGER.
