Marled Mania Sweater

West Knits Marled Mania Sweater

A mini blog

What a project!

Mark saw this jumper a few years before I finally got round to making it and we stalled because we couldn’t find the right coloured yarn. Mark wanted similar colours to those in Stephen West’s pattern pictures.

But sadly, I don’t have the back catalogue of yarn that Mr West has so I needed to buy yarn for the occasion, rather than use off cuts from stash!

One Saturday I was at the Yarn n Yarns knit club and got chatting to the owner, Angela, about this project and how I was forever looking for the perfect yarn. Angela said “I might have something out the back…” and then voila – she produced this perfect fade set from Dutch dyer Carolein of Colourful Creativity.

Carolein’s yarn was neon colours which were so bright, and as it had been dyed as a fade set it meant I was able to get a gradient of colour throughout the jumper without multiple offcuts of yarns.

I split the yarn up into smaller balls which meant I had each colour allocated for the body and then each sleeve so that I could continue the fade all the way down the jumper consistently.

The pattern is knit with a marled effect which is obtained by holding a colour yarn double with the black or grey. The ribbed collar is a combination of black and grey, the black is then dropped and swapped out for the coloured yarn for the sleeves and body.

Once I’d gotten started it really didn’t take very long to work on as I was pretty addicted.

There is an option in the pattern to extend the sleeves to include thumb holes which Mark has me to do and it gave a really unusual finish to the jumper that really sets it off!

This was one of the first projects that I started filming my progress to share on my YouTube channel, if you’re interesting in hearing more about this project check out this link https://youtu.be/lKjw4LAaaNg