This is a “teaching” pattern. There is an extensive appendix at the end with an abbreviations glossary, instructions, and lots of photos illustrating the techniques used in the pattern. If you already know how to do all these things, by all means, the appendix is unnecessary, but if you don’t, my hope is that you will by the time you finish knitting this sweater! This is perfect for your first fair isle pattern!

This top-down baby cardigan is a perfect way to use up sock yarn scraps and to try two techniques that knitters can be afraid of: steeking and stranded knitting. It makes use of two cool tricks. The stranded yoke pattern is knit with self-striping sock yarn, so it looks much more complicated than it actually is. The solid-color portions of the sweater are knit flat, with only the patterned portions knit in the round and steeked. While you can certainly use a sewn steek, I’ve also written instructions for a non-sewn steek I learned in Gibson-Roberts and Robson’s Knitting in the Old Way. This steek involves unraveling the steek stitches, cutting them, and tying them in pairs down the length of the steek section. This method creates a lot of ends to deal with, but it is relatively fear-free, since you can go as slowly as you’d like, and the ends are tied, so you don’t have to secure them. It’s also a great steek to use with superwash yarn, which is too “slippery” for some other traditional steeking techniques.