Trying my hand at menswear

So like I mentioned before in a previous post I am trying menswear for the first time. A client of mine wants me to knit a custom cardigan for him. At first I was a little intimidated because designing menswear is actually more complex than it seems. Since men aren't as adventurous with their wardrobes as women you have a lot of restrictions. It's really difficult to come up with something new and fresh without going too far out of the box. I found that with men it is all about subtly and small details. So the first step was to do my research, I looked up a bunch of European brands and was attracted to the styles by Soul Cal Republic.

This is the sweater that my client was most drawn to (it was one of my favorites too).

 My client really liked this look but wanted me to tweek it a little bit. After all what is the point of having a custom design if it looks exactly like something that you could buy in a store? So after chatting for a while this is the design that I came up with for him.

The next step was to make swatches of the different stitches in the cardigan so that he could see what it would look like out of the yarn that he chose. The yarn he chose is a lot fluffier then the yarn that the sweater in the picture is made out of. He chose "Alpaca Cloud" by Filatura Lanarota (78% baby alpaca, 22% acrylic). It is so soft! I got it at the Smiley's Manhattan Yarn Sale, it was only $30 a bag! And there were ten balls in each bag! They had some crazy deals there...anyway here is what the stitches looked like with the alpaca cloud...

Now I'm just waiting for his approval on the final sketch and then I can start making it! Ok, well that's my update for the day, I'll keep you posted on how the project is going :)