The Year of The Sweater

​By Erin Witschey

Almost two years ago I started my first real sweater--the Rainbows in the Gorge with Wonderlands Yarn rainbow gradient set. It took me about 9 months start to finish and it is probably one of my favorite projects ever. Since then, I've made several other sweaters and while I was content to "one and done" the Rainbows in the Gorge. I've been working on making multiples of all the sweaters I have made since then

I liked these patterns and found other yarn that I thought would be fantastic for it. Like the Luminos tee. After I made the first, I liked it so much, we had a class for it. And when we had the trunk show with Cornbread and Honey, they had a colorway--Alabama Foliage--that I thought would be fantastic in it. Similarly, the shop hosted a Spun Right Round trunk show and I loved their Neon Nectar sample pattern and how it turned out with the Beachball colorway I got from the show. I ordered Squish DK in Storm from that show and I'm about a third of the way through a second tee. This year, I also knit the Allure Camisole with Emma's Super Silky in Lucky Charms. It's a simple but great pattern to keep my hands busy when on virtual meetings. Given that, I started another with Laughing Cat Fibers in their Kamala colorway, but this time I adjusted the pattern to start from the top down with an icord and only two triangles instead of four to turn it into a halter top. So far it's turning out great and I'm hoping will be a single skein project. 

The pattern I've remade and plan to remake the most is the Boneyard Sweethearts pattern by Tellybeans. This was my second sweater and while I loved the colors I used in Woolstok, I wanted a better fit. So I re-worked the yoke with Pacific Knits doodle dinosaur patterns and knit it again with Malabrigo scraps for the dinosaur colors and loved these results. Then the store brought in this gorgeous dark blue Rios and all I could think about was a snowflake sweater so I reworked the yoke again and knit the sweater a third time. This is probably my favorite of the three. I have the yarn to knit a fourth (and maybe final) one of this sweater with Malabrigo and with the original skeletons. 

So this past year has not only been the year of the sweater for me. It's also really been the year of the re-knit. The yarns inspired it!