How I Made It My Own

You might be able to recognize this top. It is a heavily modified Cable-Down Raglan sweater (IK, Spring 2007) Ravelry Link here . Most notably, I've eliminated the sleeves.



Living in Southern California I find that I don't wear long sleeve sweaters all that often. So, it seemed like a good idea to convert this into a warm top rather than a full fledged sweater.

The other modifications really happened during the knitting process. I believe it was the renowned Elizabeth Zimmermann who pronounced that more than reading a pattern you need to pay attention to how the knitting is unfolding, or something to that effect. For those of you unfamiliar, Elizabeth Zimmermann was founder of Schoolhouse Press a wonderful knitting resource/supplier and a business that is continued today by her daughter, Meg Swansen. Someday I would really like to knit Meg's Wrap Yourself in Lace shawl. Mr Puffy, please make a note of that.

My other modifications were pretty minor. Rather than knitting a sweater measuring 11 inches from the underarm, I chose instead to opt for a generous 15 inches. I don't know about you, but I don't much care for sweaters that leave my mid-drift area exposed to a cool breeze.

I also adjusted the body cable pattern. Often you will find that with cable patterns they will require you to choose between bust sizes that are 3 or more inches apart rather than the customary 2 inches. This is because the cable design itself takes a certain number of stitches in order for it to work out correctly in each size. For me, as I have a slight build, that is just too large a margin. With this pattern I would have had to chose between knitting a sweater that was a size too large or too small. Rather than go that route, I simply modified the cable pattern to work for my in-between size. I did this by eliminating the vertical lines that separated each of the smaller cables patterns. Since the design was a bit "busy" for my taste anyway, this seemed a good choice.



Lastly, to keep with my theme of making the overall pattern a little lighter, I knit only one band of purl stitches at the hem and sleeves, rather than two.

So that's the story of how I made it my own. By making just a few modifications you can customize a sweater pattern to better suit your personality, climate, and body type! This, of course, can all go horribly wrong. But, in this case, I'm very pleased with the result!

Specs: Cable-Down Raglan, Interweave Knits Magazine, Spring 2007; Tilli Tomas yarn, Aspen (130 yds /skein 100% Australian Merino) colorway Skydrop; US 6 needles; just over 4 skeins. This is an incredibly soft yarn and a pleasure to wear next to your skin. It is a single ply yarn, though, and I must admit to some concern as to how well it will wear. For example, as you can see in the picture below, some of the strands waiting to be woven have, well, come undone or unspun, if you wish. I've not seen this happen before, at least not to the extent I'm seeing with this yarn. For that reason I personally will avoid open work and patterns calling for a loose guage with this yarn.