A Cropped, Coral Colored Sweater

In July I had a hankering to knit.  Go figure, right?!  But the urge struck, and so I gave in, despite the temperature.

A few months earlier, Poison Grrls had a sale on their knitting patterns.  I kept seeing lots of cute patterns designed by Amy Appel show up on my Instagram feed, so I decided to try one for myself.

I had this coral colored wool in my stash for a few years, and since I had enough for the project, I decided to go for it.  Coincidently, the yarn works very nicely with the beaded circle skirt I have been stitching.  And a cropped silhouette works perfectly with a circle skirt, so hooray for at least one separate in my wardrobe that will work with the sweater.

I don't wear my hand knits nearly enough, and one of the issues is that I tend to choose patterns and yarn colors without a whole lot of thought to what I will wear with the sweater once it's finished.  I don't have this problem with sewn items, but for some reason, sweaters seem to exist in some alternate wardrobe universe for me.  But I'm working on the problem!

This particular design is knit from the top down.  It's a technique that I am not very familiar with, but the instructions were clear.  They didn't always make sense while reading through the words in my mind, but like so many knitting pattern, you just have to have needles and yarn in hand to figure things out.

I can see the appeal of working on a garment in this way since you can try it on as you go.  Am I going to switch to knitting only top-down sweaters in the future?  I doubt it, but I am pleased with the way this pattern worked out for me, and I am not against trying something similar in the future.

This design also gave me a chance to pull out the double-pointed needles.  One of these days I am going to try the magic circle trick with circular needles, but for now, the old stand-by double pointed set does its job.

The only real change I made to the pattern is the neckline ribbing.  The pattern comes with a mock turtleneck shaping.  The instructions suggest a loose bind-off technique that I have never used before, and it certainly is stretchy, but it looked gapey and odd to me.  I tried a couple of other bind-offs, but one was too tight, and the other didn't look great.  

Instead of getting frustrated, I folded it in half and stitched the bind-off to the base of the ribbing.  And you know what?  I love it!  I am definitely going to use this neckline style again.

The weather these days is even hotter than it was in July, so I still haven't worn the sweater, but I have a feeling this one is going to see a lot of wear.

It turns out, another skirt I made this year is a perfect color match to this sweater, so that's already two matching skirts in the closet!  And I can definitely see myself making another version.

[Ravelry notes on this sweater may be found here.]