The FOlio: Dance of the Needles, or an Ode to Knitty

In the FOlio, I reflect on a finished knitting object and what the process of knitting it taught me.

Pattern : Dance of the Needles by Meiju K-P
Yarn : Plucky Knitter Solo DK in Light Bright (Yellow/multi), Pick Your Poison (dark purple) and a gray that I unfortunately didn’t write down before I lost the label
Knitted from : June 2020 to November 2020

Lesson:  Simple alterations via colorblocking and creative size choices. And a reminder to trust your gut.

I am normally pretty good about not buying sweater quantities of yarn unless I have a project in mind.  (Single skeins of sock yarn, on the other hand…) When I went to my first Vogue Knitting Live in 2019 I had a prepared list of what projects I was hoping to grab yarn for and for the most part, I stayed pretty close to that list.  Yarn for my wedding shawl – done! Yarn to make a fade sweater –done! Yarn to make a specific colorwork sweater I’d been watching the designer develop on Instagram – done! (That one’s its own future post.)

And then I wandered into the Plucky Knitter booth. 

I knew of Plucky’s reputation in the knitting community but I was not prepared for how packed that booth was.  It became clear fairly quickly that there were not many sweater quantities of yarn left in colors I really wanted.  I found myself in the DK section and instantly gravitated to the dark purple, the exact dark jewel tone purple of my high school bedroom – but there were only two skeins left. A vibrant yellow skein shot through with a rainbow of neon colors sat alone as a singleton and it struck my fancy.  Well okay, maybe I could do some kind of colorwork thing – but three skeins might be not quite enough.  After a little testing, I found a nice gray that seemed like it would complement both and picked up one more skein. I went home and waited for inspiration to strike.

One other thing I’ve learned when I’ve bought yarn without a project in mind is never try to force a pattern selection.  Yes, I’ll often look around for patterns that (in this instance) use three colors of DK in limited quantities just to get some ideas but it’s rare that I hit on the right pattern when I’m actively looking for it.  I just need to wait for the pattern to arrive in due course

In the end, I waited about a year.  The First Fall 2020 issue of Knitty, an issue that arrived when the world had changed completely from the world in which I bought the yarn, featured a lovely DK weight cardigan, Dance of the Needles, that was specifically designed to feature a lacey back in a special color of yarn.  It was exactly what I wanted for my yellow/neon rainbow Plucky.  I wasn’t sure if I had enough purple to do the whole front, but maybe I could do the sleeves in the gray if I ran out.  So with a plan in mind I started knitting.

I want to take a moment here to talk about how much I love Knitty, which I have been pulling patterns from and sending new knitters towards since 2006.  I love that their patterns are free AND that they still pay their designers for their contributions (so much so that I am a loyal Patreon member, I pay $5 per issue and it is still the best value in the knitting community - come join us!).  I love that they code their patterns by difficulty.  I love the sheer creativity and diversity of their designers, some of whom are full-time professionals, and some of whom are just indulging their creativity on the side. Amy and Jillian are the best and I hope I can give back to the knitting community even a fraction of the joy they’ve brought the rest of us as I build out this site.

But back to the knitting.  I knew I was going to be cutting the yardage close with the lacy back, so since the pattern was designed to be oversized, I decided to knit the smallest size and hope it would be big enough.  This turned out to be a great decision as I had less than 10g of yarn remaining.

The fun thing about Dance of the Needles is that you knit the entire back panel first, then pick up along each side and knit the front of the sweater sideways.  I’m one of those people who always winds up picking up far more stitches than I should along the front (and yes I do the whole, pick up three - skip a row trick, it still doesn’t work), and when I finished picking up the stitches I realized I was basically on the stitch count for the next size up.  Since I was a bit nervous about the sweater being too small if I stuck to the smaller size I figured knitting the larger size wouldn’t hurt – once again my gut proved correct (I have a long standing issue with cardigans and jackets that are perfectly drapey in the front looking sloppily drapey in the back and this cardigan does not have that problem).  But when I committed to the larger size I knew there was no way I was going to have enough purple yarn to get through the fronts AND the sleeves. So gray colorblock sleeves it was.

However, as I got closer to starting those sleeves, I loved the color and texture of the back so much that I started to think the front looked a little …boring.  And I was clearly going to have a bit of purple remaining after the fronts and neckband plus that 10g of yellow yarn, and it occurred to me a little visual interest might jazz things up.

And once again, my crafting gut was right:

I used almost every last bit of the yellow yarn to squeeze those four stripes in, but I am so pleased with the result.  The sweater is just the right weight to wear over a T-shirt inside on winter days or outside on breezy spring or fall ones.  I finished it off with some metal buttons I had originally bought for an old coat  – somewhat unconventional but it adds another pop of visual interest in the dark purple.

My biggest lesson here – sometimes the simplest alterations have a huge impact.  I would have worn this sweater if the sleeves were plain gray, but I LOVE this sweater with the striped sleeves, it feels like part of the pattern in the way it ties the front and back of the sweater together. My secondary lesson is that it’s okay to trust your creative gut – if I hadn’t dropped to the smallest size to knit the back and then gone ahead and trusted my instinct that knitting the front a size up was the best choice it wouldn’t fit as well as it does, either.

Have you ever made a knitting choice that you knew was right even if it was not the technically correct one?  Are you a pattern first or yarn first person, and how do you match one to the other?