This is my “Knit City 2023” sweater that I made for our big yarn festival in Vancouver! I’m really, really very very proud of this sweater and I absolutely love it. The sweater was designed by Caitlin Hunter from Boyland Knitworks and it’s called Alpine Bloom.
“Alpine Bloom” has a short-sleeve t-shirt kind of design and is a little bit cropped. Of course, since this pattern is knit from the top down, you’re able to knit it as long as you like! The sleeves are very short — you only need to knit a few rounds and then you hold all those sleeve stitches. Then you cast on a whole other set of stitches for the lace cuff of the sleeve. So rather than finishing the sleeves with ribbing, the lace cuff is knit separately and then grafted on. I used two sets of knitting needles and a sewing needle and had to graft the stitches together kind of like how you would graft a toe closed for for your socks.
When I was at Knit City, I did notice a couple of people wearing this sweater as well. Many people had just decided not to knit the lace cuff and just knit ribbing straight down. That’s a much quicker and easier way to finish this sweater. You could also swap it out for a different lace pattern. Some people told me they thought the lace was a bit bulky and wouldn’t lay flat, but I quite like the lace and it seemed fine for me.
I was really happy with my yarn choices for this sweater! I knit this sweater in SweetGeorgia BFL+Silk Fine and carried it along with our SweetGeorgia Silk Mist. The BFL or Bluefaced Leicester Wool is really beautiful and glossy soft wool that still has a little bit of tooth to it. Our BFL+Silk yarn has not been superwash-treated at all. The lustre of this wool, blended with silk is really lovely. And then to knit the body of the sweater, I held it together with a strand of Silk Mist, our silk and mohair laceweight yarn. Held together, these two yarns makes the most beautifully delicious, soft, and hazy fabric. I love the colourway, Gather, which is from our Enigma collection.
Then for the colourwork yoke, the pattern originally called for Spincycle yarn, so what I did was spin my own yarn! In this case I spun our SweetGeorgia BFL+Silk Spinning Fibre which is the same blend as our BFL+Silk Fine yarn. This spinning fibre was in our Salted Caramel colourway and I spun it as a fractal yarn. In order to highlight some of the hotter and brighter colours in the fibre, I held my handspun yarn together with another skein of Silk Mist in a brighter colour as well. So it’s like I used the Silk Mist yarn to create almost a bit of a tone or a shade. It was like shading each one of these colours into a slightly different direction.
Overall, the effect of this colourwork yoke is very subtle and low-contrast, which I love. The yoke doesn’t pop too much and initially I was concerned that maybe there wasn’t going to be enough contrast. But now looking at the sweater, I think it actually turned out really well and I’m very happy about it all!
I surprised myself, actually. I’ve been spinning since 2005 and this is the first time I’ve actually used my handspun yarn in a sweater. It’s taken that long. Almost 20 years? I know I spun tons of yarn over the years and never felt like it was be good enough to use. I’ve knit socks with handspun, knit small things, and woven with some of my handspun… but never actually got to the point of putting it into a sweater because I always thought that it wasn’t good enough and now I realize I should have done this ages ago!
If you’re interested in spinning your own yarn, I highly recommend using it in your knitting and celebrating the beauty of your handspun, however it is! Use your handspun, be proud, and enjoy it!
Felicia’s Alpine Bloom
Equipment
Materials
- 3 skeins SweetGeorgia Yarns BFL+Silk Fine in Gather colourway
- 2 skeins SweetGeorgia Yarns Silk Mist in Trinket colourway
- 1 skein SweetGeorgia Yarns Silk Mist in Crushed Berry colourway
- 1 braid SweetGeorgia Yarns BFL+Silk spinning fibre in Salted Caramel colourway, spun into a 3-ply fingering weight fractal yarn
Video
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