I posted pictures yesterday of a sweater that I had just finished.
It's a jaunty little number, and I'm glad that I'll have it in the pile, even if I do have to do a little bit of extreme blocking first. This is probably my best design to-date. Of course there are others that are good, certainly others that are more impressive feats of knitting engineering, but there aren't a lot of other ones that look good as consistently, and regularly. It's a good sweater, testified by the fact that I've knit 3 versions of it by now, and am probably going to knit another version soon.
There are a couple of things that make this sweater so delightful to knit and wear. First it's knit entirely in the round, so there's not a lot of thought involved, and while I certainly like complex projects, sometimes it's nice to have something plain going on. Because it's knit in the round there are a number of knitterly wisdom that's incorporated into the design: gussets at the underarm, combined front and back neck shaping, a slit neck which regulates temperature for those in more hospitable climates, short rows that keep the back from riding up, and so forth. Secondly, as a design feature, the fact that the top of the shoulders and sleeves are a different color gives this sweater some of the appearance of having saddled sleeves, which ameliorates the problem of drop shoulders, and the problem of boring solid colored, without going crazy.
I call it the sport sweater, mostly because I think that the split neck is kinda sport-like, and it emphasizes the fact that this is a casual, comfortable sweater, not a formal blouse or jacket-type sweater. I dunno, it seemed like the thing to call it. This sweater would be my submission into a book of "house sweaters," that I've thought of putting together for a while. I think it'd be cool to ask a bunch of designers to submit designs for the sweater that they find themselves reaching for when ever it gets a little drafty. I think we all have "that sweater," and I think it'd be an interesting collection of "real" people sweaters (as opposed to most of the sweaters that make it in, say Vogue Knitting.)
So I wanted to post pictures of the other two sweaters in this series for reference, and because I finally have pictures of these sweaters.
Here's the first iteration:
and
Here's the remake version that I did two years ago, in attempt to get something that was a little bit more fitted, out of better yarn.
and
Enjoy. Working an unusual Saturday at the Yarn Store. Hoping I'm not too worn by the end of the day.
Onward and Upward!