A Year and a Bit With the Taylor Swift Cardigan

I’ve been reworking my, well, life, a bit and I’ve been taking stock of everything, but especially my DIY’S. I’m hoping I can analyze what I’ve made, if and how I wear it, and come out with a more intentional DIY strategy for the future.

I made this cardigan a year and a bit ago, and I do truly love it…

…But like with anything, time has brought about some interesting realizations…

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First off, a brief review…

I used the Folklore Pattern by Lion Brand Yarn.

For a free pattern, this isn’t too bad. You’ll need a lot of row counters because there’s such a variety of cables. The only major issue I ran into was I could not figure out the sleeves. They wanted you to cable but start the cables while working the increases and… my brain just couldn’t wrap around it. Still can’t. The only major disturbance was this made my sleeves a lot baggier which I haven’t found to be a bad thing.

I used Rico Creative Cotton, a 100% cotton worsted-weight yarn. I do like this yarn, it’s a solid choice for a lot of different projects.

On the fibre note…

I made this with cotton yarn because I had a bunch of it from a project that didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I go back and forth on whether or not I regret it.

The Pros:

• It’s really soft and comfy

• It’s not uncomfortable to wear in the summer

• I can throw it in the washing machine

The Cons:

• It’s not as warm as wool so I’m sometimes not as warm as I want to be in winter

• Cotton drapes very differently than wool so it’s a bit weird in the front

• I just think wool would’ve made it look nicer

Something weird happened…

The biggest thing I noticed is that whenever I went to wear this out I just… didn’t want to. I realized after a while I didn’t want people to think I was a Taylor Swift superfan. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of anything, so I tend to avoid wearing any musically associated shirt because people get very weird about it. There was just a “Is this who I want to be? Is this who I want to attract?” moment. I like Taylor Swift but not to the extent of a lot of people. A part of me also wonders if it’s because of the cotton and the way it drapes so maybe I just don’t feel as amazing in it as I would if it was wool. Maybe it’s that there’s a mistake on the back in the cabling and I know it’s there. I still haven’t quite figured it out but there’s something that prevents me from wearing this in the great outside. The result is that this has become my home on-the-couch sweater and honestly, I love it for that. I actively look forward to coming home and cuddling up into this sweater knowing that I made it and it’s soft and perfect. In retrospect, that has sort of made cotton the perfect choice as I wash this more than I would ever wash anything wool.

I learned something important…

My biggest takeaway after a year of this pattern is that I need to not do the whole novelty pattern thing. I wanted this project because I thought this cardigan was a big novelty, I thought it would be something a lot of people would be interested in… and I wasn’t wrong. It’s both my top-performing blog post and video.

The thing is, I just don’t think that’s a good enough reason to produce something. While this turned out well and I love the cardigan I know I didn’t make it for the right reasons. I tend to get carried away with “everyone is making this” and I’ve ended up with a wardrobe full of stuff that I’ve lovingly made but don’t lovingly wear.

I’m trying to be more intentional and create a wardrobe that actually works together and I think that this cardigan has taught me a lot about that. Moving forward I’m looking more at what I actually like and dressing for my body and style, not a trend cycle.

Don’t get it twisted though, I am very excited about the cup of tea I’m about to enjoy in my snuggly cardigan.