The Spottingham Cardi is a bit of a pun on Nottingham. With spots. It made us laugh. (Belinda is from Nottingham.)

So, we have a stylish chap’s cardi, embellished with spots. Dots. Whatever you want to call them. No messing about with stranded knitting or intarsia here. Knitted in our favourite John Arbon Knit By Numbers merino yarn, it’s beautifully soft and perfect for the man about town. Of course, a lady about town could also wear the Spottingham as a boyfriend cardi, but at the moment the cross-chest measurements (after decreasing for the armholes) are graded for chap’s sizes. But don’t let that put you off - it’s quite neat fitting on chaps as you can see from the pics, and it also looks lovely, oversized and boyfriend-ish, on our female model.

There are 5 sizes to choose from:

To fit chest: 86-91.5(96.5-101.5, 106.5-111.5, 116.5-122, 127-132)cm / 34-36(38-40, 42-44, 46-48, 50-52)”.

Finished size: 98(108, 120, 132, 144)cm / 38½(42½, 47¼,52, 56¾)“.

7(7, 8, 8, 8) x 100g hanks.

As usual because this yarn tends to shrink up a little on steaming / blocking, we’ve given row counts to knit to and a post-steaming / blocking tension in order to make lengths and sizing more accurate. We’ve written before about how to re-calculate lengths if your row tension isn’t the same as ours, please don’t be afraid of this as it really is quite easy and makes for a better fitting garment. Our garment patterns all come with comprehensive, to-scale spec drawings to make any alterations you might wish to do easier.

We’ve knitted the pocket bags starting with a Turkish cast-on, it’s our preferred method. There are plenty of tutorials around all over the web for this technique. You really need a couple of 4mm circs to knit them this way, though.