Monday, October 31, 2011

Knit one, purl one


Before I started charting the design for Liam's Aran sweater on graph paper, I dug out the sweater I knitted for DH--oh, about a million years ago!--for some inspiration. I was reminded that there's no set pattern for these sweaters--each is a little different in the combination of vertical panels that the knitter chooses.

I began with a center honeycomb pattern of oblong cross stitches using Felicity's Garden "Snow" and then filled in the background with tent stitches. On either side of the center panel I added a row of braided knitting to simulate cables. Through trial and error, I found that the braided knitting shows up better when flanked by a single row of tent stitches.

Next to the "cables" I added a column of Kalem stitches, followed by another row of braided knitting. Then it was back to the honeycomb pattern to finish the body of the sweater. I'll go back later and finish the ribbing at the bottom of the sweater with more Kalem stitches.

Was it difficult to stitch? No! All of the stitches used were quite simple to execute--the only tricky part was hitting on the right combination of stitches to achieve the desired effect. Did it take some time to stitch? Yes--but I think the effort was worth it!

4 comments:

Mer said...

Looks great! Exactly like a fisherman's sweater! Can't wait to see what you do with the rest of the pattern!

Cool City Stitcher said...

Oh my.. it looks terrific! Beautifully stitched!

Anonymous said...

You never cease to amaze me! The sweater turned out perfectly. Now what do you have in store for the rest of Liam's outfit? I can't wait.

Edy said...

Fantastic!