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| Finished and blocked! |
While I learned to knit as a child, I didn't do much with it until I rediscovered the craft in my adult life. And thanks to youtube videos and the folks who run the Handknitting Association of Iceland, I learned how to make stranded colorwork yoke sweaters in the past year or so.
The first few sweaters I made, I followed specific patterns, but then found a wonderful book about the process of creating a stranded colorwork sweater by Tin Can Knits called Strange Brew.
I decided that I was going to make a bespoke sweater for myself with motifs from my favorite fandom: Doctor Who.
A trip to Webs Yarn and I found Debby Bliss Fine Donegal - the perfect fingering weight wool and cashmere blend in the exact color I wanted: TARDIS blue. (It wasn't called that, but it should have been!)
Then it was time to design the sweater and plan the motifs. First I did a sketch.
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| Initial concept sketch |
I have a kindle scribe which I use for a lot of purposes. It was purchased primarily so I could edit my manuscripts on it, but it's also amazing for notating/adjusting knitting patterns (you can write on pdf's) and for sketching out concepts.
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| Motif design for the TARDIS |
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| Motif design for K-9 |
Then it was time to do some math. (Or maths as my friends across the pond say.) After making a swatch and measuring gauge (yes, it's a pain. I hate doing it. But I did it anyway.), I chose the size M/L in sock yarn as the template in the Strange Brew pattern book. That meant I knew how many stitches I had to work with around the cuffs, the waist, and the yoke, so I could layout the motifs and know how many repeats I needed to do and how many stitches I needed to put between them.
For example, the question marks were 6 stitches wide by 11 stitches high.
I had 60 stitches around the wrist to work with. That meant 6 repeats of the motif, with 4 stitches between them. (making the motif 10 stitches wide including the background color stitches.) Sleeves incorporate increases, and the overall pattern called for increasing 2 stitches each 6th round, but there's definitely wiggle room, so I did the increases before and after the question mark motif rounds without any issue.
A tip for motifs: put in stitch markers all around to mark each repeat. For the question marks, that meant every 10th stitch. That way if you make a mistake, you catch it after a single motif instead of at the end of the round.
A second tip for motifs - set the 'beginning of round' to be at the back of a shoulder to hide any jog of the pattern. You may need to use some math to figure out where the first repeat starts so your design is centered the way you want it.
The entire project took me from initial design and starting on the sleeves in January of 2024 (if you saw me at Arisia or Boskone in Boston, you might have seen me working on it) to blocking the finished sweater in September of 2024. I did a few other smaller projects in between, so maybe 6 months of actual knitting time. That's actually not bad for a sock weight yarn and size 4 needles.
I may turn this into a cardigan at some point, so I laid out the motifs so there would be a clear line down the middle to steek, but for now, I'm happy with it and will be wearing it at Arisia.
I highly recommend getting the Strange Brew book if you have any interest at all in creating your own yoked stranded colorwork sweaters. The geek in me loves to know how things work, so it was definitely something I knew I wanted in my library. Or if you have a sweater pattern that you like the fit of, you can always just use it as the template and create your own fandom designs with a little math and patience.
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| Closeup of the motifs during blocking |
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