The cardigan is finally done! It took me almost 4 months to finish. I used about 200g of white and 300g of red wool (was playing yarn chicken with the red, and won by few grams).
So, to finish off, I picked up the stitches along the front sides using 2 mm needles, 4 stitches per 3 rows. I have used markers to separate vertical pattern repeats, and made sure I picked up the same number of stitches per each repeat: 35 for the top couple of rows+1st pattern repeat, 32 per each next full repeat, 11 stitches for the last rows of pattern and 25 for the ribbing at the bottom = 231 stitches. The right side was then 21 row in 1×1 ribbing (so 22 rows including the pick up) , 2 rows in tubular stitch and tubular bind off. The left one: pick up the stitches from bottom up. After 9 rows of ribbing, bind off stitches as follows for the button holes (5 holes in total): 6 ridges, then bind off over the 4 ridges for each hole, and 21 ridges between each of the holes, 6 at the end. In restrospective, it would have looked better if I picked up slightly less stitches, probably 6-8 in total.
I used knitted-on i-Cord to finish off the neckline, 1 row per each stitch.
That’s about it. It was a huge work, I am not sure whether I will ever dare to make another sweater totally in stranded color work, but it surely does look gorgeous.
To read more about this project: