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:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2223/2059346563_d39db6984e.jpg?v=0

and

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2327/2060134520_d119f6aa28.jpg?v=0

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.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2298/2059343843_80c8bd8646.jpg?v=0

and

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2395/2059338327_1e3bb67e11.jpg?v=0

Enjoy. Working an unusual Saturday at the Yarn Store. Hoping I’m not too worn by the end of the day.

Onward and Upward!