Knit an Easy Slipover That’s Perfect for Layering

My love of layers has been well documented, but just in case you’re new here, I layer pretty much all day every day. I wear a long sleeve shirt “just in case” most days even in the depths of summer (southern air conditioning is no joke) and when the barest hint of cool weather comes, I’m piling on sweaters and vests and long sleeved shirts. Sometimes all at once.

So I love projects like Wineberry from Berroco. This boxy slipover is meant to be a top layer over a long sleeved shirt. It’s worked in a cozy, handpainted worsted weight yarn that’s a blend of acrylic, nylon and wool, bringing a little warmth but also the ability to machine wash, which I know is important to a lot of people.

The top has a turtleneck for even more warmth, which turns into kind of a circular yoke before the body is worked straight after the shoulder shaping. It also has a split hem.

Wineberry comes in 10 sizes, with a bust measurement (of the garment) ranging from 36 to 72 inches, or 91.5 to 183 cm. The pattern says it is designed to be worn with 2-6 inches, or 5-15 cm of positive ease. If you plan to wear it over something that’s a little bulky, or you just like a relaxed fit, you’ll want to choose a size that will give you more ease if possible.

This looks like a really fun and easy project that’s also fun and easy to wear and would be a great alternative to a light jacket on those days that aren’t quite cold. Or if you’re like me, you’ll wear it around the house when everyone else insists it isn’t actually cold. Just me?

You can see more photos of the finished project and download the free knitting pattern from Berroco.

[Photo: Berroco]

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations.

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind.

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca.

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions.

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic).

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only.

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

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