"Edgar" - 1920's cardigan

The project I am currently working on is using a vintage Patons & Baldwin's pattern No. 324 which I bought from eBay. It is an original 1920's pattern with full colour chart on the inside (I would imagine this would have made it a pretty expensive pattern to purchase at the time).

The pattern is knitted using 2-ply Real Shetland wool (made by P&B themselves) but since this doesn't exist I had to supplement a yarn that would knit up to the gauge correctly - that being 6 1/2 stitches to the inch (in old money) or 26 stitches to 10cm on No. 8 needles (again old Imperial money) or 4mm (US 6) in stocking stitch.

A couple of months ago I went on a trip to Hoorn with my friend Donna to Schouten Handwerken to ask the advice of Wilbert Schouten, and to also see what wonderful yarns he had on offer for me in his shop. After showing Wilbert the pattern, and some quick iphone searching for English knitting conversions he suggested that I use Lana Grossa "Cool Wool". It's 100% Virgin Merino wool, washes at 30.c and gave almost the correct tension even though it was a 5-ply. Selected 4 colour combination of grey, red, green, and dark blue and left with a smile on my face...

And after a couple of weeks knitting on this project this is where I am with it so far. The first image at the beginning of the post is the back, wrong side facing, being blocked. I usually use this towel to block as I can pin it out and use the squares to give myself a straight edge to measure against to make sure that the piece is laying equal. I was worried that the colourwork was perhaps too tight but once blocked it lays perfectly, and I think this is also helped by the wonderful spring that is in the Lana Grossa yarn.

The second image shows the ends that the colourwork creates. I have been trying to keep this to a minimum and carry the grey/red up the side as much as possible without having lots of yarn running up the side of the work! And the third image shows detail of the right side of the cardigan, the great colour combinations of the yarn and the pattern of the colourwork itself.

I have also worked the left front and blocked that too, but the images are pretty much the same (lots of ends, orange towel for blocking..). The only difficulty with the front piece is the grey band that runs up the centre of the cardigan - I am trying to use intarsia interlock but I will still need to go over the piece at the end and just tighten it together to the body with a few stitches. May be on the right hand side this will improve!

I'll keep you updated with how it comes together.