Knit a Simple But Fun Sweater

From the front, the Simply Me Blouse from NORgardknitters looks like a plain, boxy, garter stitch sweater. The kind of thing you’d want to throw on every day, like the knit version of a sweatshirt.

But when you look at the back, you realize there’s more going on than meets the eye.

This sweater also has a giant pleat on the back, giving lots of volume and interest without making the knitting any harder.

Simply Me is worked from the top down, starting with the yoke being worked back and forth in rows. Extra stitches are cast on at the back to form the pleat (which is crocheted closed when the knitting is done) and the body is joined in the round under the underarms.

But if you know anything about knitting in the round, you know that to make garter stitch you have to knit and round and purl a round. To avoid that this pattern uses short rows so you can still knit every round and come out with garter stitch.

The sweater has a wide boatneck and a cropped, boxy shape with three-quarter sleeves. There’s no edging to interrupt the pretty waves of garter stitch.

The pattern comes in six sizes, to fit a bust from 31.5-33.5 inches, or 80-85 cm, up to 43 to 47 inches, or 110-120 cm. But there is a lot of positive ease worked into the pattern, so if you want less ease you can work it for a larger range of sizes. There are lots of projects on the project page on Ravelry, most of which show it in a solid color, but you can also see ideas for stripes or a fade. It calls for DK weight yarn.

You can find the Simply Me Blouse pattern on Ravelry, where it is available in English, Danish, French, German and Norwegian.

[Photo: NORgardknitters]

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I don’t even know what to say about this amazing knitting pattern. The Bestiary Scarf from Monstra & Mirabilia is so full of details it’s a little intimidating to talk about.

It features, as the designer describes it, an “artistic encyclopaedia of Western mythical creatures.”

The pattern includes a dragon, harpy, Medusa, chimaera, centauress, phoneix, kraken, mermaid, sew serpent, cyclops, wyvern, Pegasus, amphiptere and amphibaena. (It’s a good thing there’s a photo of the proejct with everything labelled because I definitely didn’t know the names for everything.) It’s also designed like a landscape, with water and land creatures toward the bottom ends and sky creatures toward the top.

The dragon is at the center and is worked sideways so it will show as upright when you wear it.

The scarf is worked in double knitting, so the colorwork appears in the opposite colors on the other side.

It’s worked in light fingering weight yarn (on size 0 US or 2mm knitting needles) and the colorwork is shown in charts. The pattern also includes some video tutorials and written instructions to help you along. The designer says the pattern is for intermediate knitters, and “advanced beginners may succeed with patience and the help of the video tutorials.”

When I was an advanced beginner this kind of a pattern would have brought me to tears, but if you love a challenge, and a project that you’ll wear and get tons of astonished reactions every time, this is the project for you. And of course if you have a few double knitting projects under your belt and are comfortable reading charts, this project shouldn’t be hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s fast. But lots of great things take time, and that’s never stopped us before, right?

You can get a copy of this pattern from Monstra & Mirabilia on Ravelry.

[Photo: Monstra & Mirabilia ]

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