FO Friday - Visser

My favorite online LYS, Eat.Sleep.Knit, wrapped up their first quarter KAL challenge on Monday.  We were supposed to knit things that required us to learn a new skill, and we would get credit for 1000 yards in their yarnathon.

My initial plan was to submit Zantha, which you've seen here before, since I had never done lace before.  But since then, I've knit two more, and I am just Zantha'd out right now.  I didn't even want to look at it long enough to sew the buttons on and finish it up.

Instead, I grabbed a skein of Madelinetosh Pashmina and got to work.  My two skeins of Pashmina, in Cobalt and Citrus, reminded me of the bright, complementary colors I saw a lot of in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  I decided to see if there were any typical Dutch sweater designs that I could translate into a baby sweater, and there were!

These would be quite at home in a Van Gogh work.

Dutch fisherman sweaters were exactly the thing I was looking for.  They are knit in solid colors, so the visual interest comes from various knit and purl stitch patterns that decorate most of the front of the sweater.  They also generally have a drop shoulder construction, which is much easier to measure and calculate for than the raglans I am used to making.  They are often knit very tightly, but I loosened up the gauge a bit, since a baby doesn't need to be waterproofed on a boat.  (They probably also weren't knit in a yarn with any silk content, but hey.)

I've named this sweater Visser, after the Dutch word for fisherman.

And what were the new skills I learned for this?  Many, to include casting on in pattern and the right twist mock cable.  But the one I am most proud of is seaming.  I'm no longer terrified of it, which is good, since my plan is to knit myself a seamed garment someday.  This also lets me use sweater construction methods other than raglan and circular yoke.