I'd like to tell you that I carefully planned this fall sweater, that it effortlessly slid off my needles just in time for the weather to turn in late September. The reality is that I've been knitting this in fits and starts for at least two years now and any relationship with the seasons is purely coincidental. That said, this really is the perfect fall sweater.
Yarn: Knit Pick's CotLin in Linen and remnant yarn in mustard
Cost: $50
The color blocking, too, is a matter of coincidence. I had several skeins of a cotton yarn in a beautiful mustard color gifted to me from my knitting aunt. I loved the color but struggled with figuring out how to use it. There wasn't enough for a full sweater, and I don't have a good track record for wearing knit tops or shrugs. So I concocted the idea of making a color-blocked version using KnitPick's CotLin, a cotton-linen blend, in a similar weight. Originally I toyed with the idea of using three colors in total, but the third one that I ordered ended up being too lemony and didn't look good with the other two. So a two-toned pattern it was.
Rather than a clean transition between the two colors, I interwove them for a good ten rows, increasing the density of the color the more I went. It's a nice little touch. Ideally, the color transition would have matched across the sleeves and chest, but I'm embracing the quirkiness.
The stitch pattern is based on Brooklyn Tweed's Hugo Cabled Pullover, which I knit in full for my husband several years ago. With the different colors and neckline, however, no one would ever guess that we have matching sweaters.
My biggest challenge, the reason the colors don't quite match up across the chest and sleeves, and probably what caused the most delay in knitting, were the sleeves. I always struggle with this part. Always. At first I knit them too tight, and then I knit the cap too long. And it was especially arduous to undo all that colorwork.
The main problem comes in that I am perfectly happy to knit up a rectangular body for my sweaters in whatever gauge looks good. I then have to struggle to find instructions that match my project when it's time to make the cap of the sleeves. I'm sure expert knitters have some sort of formula or resources for this, but I'm purely experimental. For this project, I loosely followed the Brooklyn Tweed instructions since I was already borrowing their stitch pattern, and then made some modifications with trial and error to fit my yarn. The sleeves might now be a bit too wide now, but I'm calling them good enough.
Speaking of wide, I am pleased with the ease of this sweater. In addition to being bad at sleeves, I am always knitting my sweaters to be very fitted. See my last sweaters here, here, and here. For this one, I definitely wanted a more relaxed sweater that fit easily over my clothes as a layering piece. This one turned out much more like a sweater I would want to wear in my everyday life. And in the cotton and linen yarn, it is comfortable to wear and breathable.
I took it out for its first wear today and it really is the perfect sweater for fall. It kept me warm in the mornings and evenings but let enough air pass through so I didn't get too hot. I also got a few compliments, which is always nice.
wow I love that. my ideal slouchy sweater style. and the color blocking is clever. wish I could knit but not starting now!
ReplyDeleteOh it's beautiful! I feel like knitting-brain and sewing-brain are totally different brains, and I just have the second one...but I definitely would have wearing-brain for that sweater :)
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