Pattern: BPT by Rebecca Hatcher as featured in the Fall 2003 Knitty.

Pattern Notes: I really liked this pattern. I was inspired to knit this piece by someone (I forget who now, a quick search of Ravelry reveals many successful FOs of this project) who said that this pattern suffered from Bad-Pattern-Photo-itis. The pattern features lovely decorative cables which are distracted from by the variegated yarn in the photos and the fit is a bit off for the person wearing it, the sweater appears short and boxy when in reality there is very nice shaping in the pattern and for me at least, it came out just the right length with no modifications.

The pattern was easy to follow and simple to do but I think the sweater is more than the sum of its parts. I love the details like cables at the raglan lines which come together on the underarms and sides:

And I also really like the applied i-cord as a hem treatment. I think it looks a lot nicer than a plain rolled hem does and it matches the slip-stitch around the zipper and hood edges.

Yarn: Good ole Cascade 220. I really like this yarn for sweaters. It comes in lots of colors and it is a really good weight for the kind of weather that we have here. This yarn does tend to pill but when it does it makes firm little pill-balls (not fuzz) that pull off easily. I just got a sweater shaver thing too so that may help.

Zipper: The only really challenging (and potentially scary to the point of off-putting) thing about this sweater pattern is the inclusion of a zipper. I think the design really calls for a zipper (can’t cheat by using buttons instead it breaks up the fancy cable). I was worried about this when I first started but I cast-on anyways because I thought the pattern was really nice other than that and I figured I would cross that bridge when I came to it.

Luckily for me, my mom was around when I was trying it on one day and I mentioned my zipper fears to her. Now, my mom is an excellent seamstress, she sews all kinds of amazing things like beautiful quilts, skirts and fancy dresses (she made my prom dress and my aunt’s wedding dress!) and she offered her skillz at zipper installation when I finished knitting!!!

Last week I finally finished knitting and my mom sewed in the zipper. She did a fantastic job, she hand stitched it in so that the stitches wouldn’t show on the front of the sweater (she said something about a “back running stitch”) and you can’t see at all where she did it! It feels really solid too.

The Jacket: The inspiration for this sweater was actually a purple jacket that I bought last year. I absolutely love this jacket but it is not very warm. Therefore there is only a short season (early fall/late spring) when I get to wear it. I wanted to extend its wearability by knitting a slim-fitting, hooded sweater to go under it:

It took me a really long time to knit this sweater. I started it back in December! I didn’t have any real problems knitting this but this sweater spent a lot of time languishing for no apparent reason. In the end though, I finished just in time. It is definitely chilly fall weather here (today was about 50 degrees) and the sweater/jacket combo is just what I needed.

Modifications: The only modification I made to the pattern was this:

Thumb loops! Yay! These were really easy, I just worked a buttonhole where I wanted the thumb holes to be. To determine the length and placement I tried the sweater on. Then, I bound-off 3 sts on one row and then I cast-on 3 sts over the hole on the next row.

I have not taken this sweater off since it was finished and I don’t plan to!

I love it!!!

by alligator on October 7, 2007