50 Day Cardigan Challenge

March 30, 2026

There's a good chance that you've heard these lines:

"Describe your perfect date"

"I'd have to say April 25th, because it's not too hot, not too cold. All you need is a light jacket"

The scene and movie came up somehow at the beginning of March, and I decided to check how many days there were until The Perfect Date. When I checked, there were 52 days left. I tossed around the idea of making a cardigan in that amount of time for about a day, and then decided I could at least try. And if I started the next day, it could be a 50 Day Cardigan Challenge.

I had a sweater quantity of lovely merino wool I had picked up from Rhinebeck ready to go. And plenty of ambition and excitement for a new idea.

Progress

It's a good thing this is just a silly self-challenge. I think every section that I have knit so far I have had to frog and knit again, because I've made some silly mistake.

49 Days to Go

1 hour 26 minutes of work

My garter swatch ended up being twice as big as what the instructions called for, but I also learned something new, and confirmed that my purls are indeed looser than my knits.

45 Days to Go

5 hours 12 minutes of work

Got started on the collar. At this point I hadn't had to frog anything yet, but that success wouldn't last very long.

44 Days to Go

7 hours 52 minutes of work

I know that I knit that corner turn at least twice. I can't remember whether this picture was taken before or after any of the froggings.

41 Days to Go

18 hours 58 minutes of work

At the end of a Sunday Stitch Session. I thought I had finished the collar, then picked up the stitches along the edge. Except I didn't have enough, which led me to realize I had missed a short row section repeat before doing the second corner turn. And something went wrong with the short rows, too, and I frogged back to the picked up stitches at some point.

30 Days to Go

26 hours 42 of work

By the time I got to my Virtual Stitch Session, I felt like I was doing really well. Then I spent the entire two hours frogging and tinking because I realized I had not done the increases correctly.