Have I lost my mind?

I think I may have lost my mind. I have decided to knit a cardigan and instead of knitting it in the traditional way I am going to steek it. For those of you who don’t know what that is, steeking is when you take a perfectly good knit item and cut it right down the middle, or at the sleeve opening. You heard me right you cut into your knitting?!? What person in their right mind cuts into their knitting (turns out plenty of sane people do it and their knitted projects look amazing as a result) I have done this before and it worked okay, not terrible but not great (it didn’t unravel so that’s a win I guess). Part of the problem was I didn’t use 100% pure wool which is a big no-no in steeking. You are supposed to use 100% wool because of it’s “stickiness” (aka felting ability). You can use superwash wool, but you just need to reinforce it even more to prevent unraveling, which I didn’t do.

This go around I will be using very sticky 100% pure wool and will double reinforce it just to be on the safe side. What makes this crazy (to me at least) is this cardigan does not call for it to be steeked. It is knit in the traditional way which is knit the RS (right side) purl the WS (wrong side). The reason why I have decided to steek it is because there is color work at the bottom and try as I might I cannot seem to get the hang of purl color work knitting. My tension is way off and my fingers are getting all tangled. It is really a beautiful cardigan and I desperately want to knit it, just like before with the last cardigan I knit I will make it up as I go along. Unlike the last cardigan this one is knit from the top down instead of the bottom up. Hopefully it isn’t too difficult, and it works out okay. I will make sure to blog about it along the way so you can all share in my frustration and utter madness for tackling this new project. Wish me luck.