How To Knit Ryan Gosling’s Sweater from Project Hail Mary

If you’re a science fiction geek you may already be familiar with the movie Project Hail Mary, based on the book of the same name and starring Ryan Gosling.

What you might not have seen if you haven’t watched the movie yet is his character’s amazing knit cardigan, featuring fox faces on the fronts and full bodies of foxes on the back, as well as paw prints along the edges.

It turns out the original design is a vintage Mary Maxim knitting pattern, which originally featured wolves instead of foxes.

Chris Miller, one of the directors of Project Hail Mary, said the foxes were an important choice for the character, whose clothes are often marked with personal history (and sciencey dad jokes).

Mary Maxim has released a kit for making the fox version of the cardigan, which has already sold out, but there is a wait list for future kits.

The project uses bulky weight yarn and is considered for intermediate knitters. I assume it uses intarsia rather than duplicate stitch for the foxes (Tom Daley made a version that uses duplicate stitch you can see on his Instagram).

The kit offers two sizes, with a chest measurement of 38-40 inches or 44-45.5 inches (that’s 96.5-101.6 cm or 111.76-115.5 cm). The pattern and yarn are included but not the zipper you would need to complete the project as it is shown in the movie.

You can also buy the pattern not as a kit for the original wolf cardigan sweater. The original was published in the 1950s (the original pamphlet is shown on the pattern page and it is fantastic) and uses bulky weight yarn. It comes in four sizes.

This looks like a fun project and the knitting without the colorwork is probably pretty easy. If you make one I’d love to know how it turns out!

[Photo: Mary Maxim]

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

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