Ethnic Knitting Discovery Gallery

This sweater was knitted by Caitlin, who said, "I have to say it was one of the easiest things I have ever made. It knitted up so fast."

The design is the simple sweater from the Netherlands. In Ethnic Knitting Discovery, the sweater features a motif on the center front, but this shows that you can use a gorgeous multi-colored yarn and make the whole sweater with just Stokinette stitch and ribbing with beautiful results.

The body is knit in the round. There's minimal shaping for the square neck, with the neckband creating the curved shape. The shoulders are joined with three needle bind-off. The sleeves are also knit in the round and you can work cuff-up and sew them in, or pick up sts around the armholes and knit down to the cuff for a completely seamless garment.

The yarn is Plymouth Confusion, which is a really fun yarn made up of all different textures. It does all the work of changing colors for you! Here are the details:

from the Kaos Series Collection
Yarn Content: see label
Yarn Gauge: 3 sts=1"/US 10.5 needle
Yarn Length: 109 yds/ approx 65-75g skein

And some more photos from Caitlin:

This sweater, designed and knitted by Kris Paige, shows off the llama from the Andean chapter of Ethnic Knitting Discovery and the Norwegian Boat-Neck sweater design. Kris added bobbles to the design to give the llamas some rocks to stand on.



The yarn used in Plymouth Encore, a wool-acrylic blend machine washable yarn. It knits up at about 5 sts to the inch on size 7 needles. The colors are Encore Worsted MC: 848 (navy), and CC: Encore Colorspun Worsted 7510 (orange, yellow, and cream striping effect).

Kris used about 4 balls of each color. When I asked her how that happened, since the sweater looks like there is much more of the navy background color, here's what she said:

I think I know what happened: if you look at the sweater, while the licey stuff seems predominant, up in the pattern areas, the orange is the predominant color, because of the llamas and the bobbles. I can't swear I ended up with the same little bits on the floor, but basically, I'd say it was about even....

I love the way Kris used a variegated colorway for the contrasting color on this. The colors remind me of the winter sunrises here in Colorado.



Thanks for sharing photos of your sweater with us, Kris!

The votes are in and the Ethnic Knitting Discovery knitalong participants will be designing and knitting Norwegian ski sweaters, beginning in January. I thought I'd show off a few of the Norwegian sweaters here.

Here's a drawing showing the basic sweater elements:



Here is an interpretation of the sweater designed by Debbie O'Neill. The first shows the colors used on the cover of Ethnic Knitting Discovery; the second shows the colors used for the sweaters in the Interweave Knits Gifts Issue. If you look closely, you can see how Debbie deviated by the basic plan when she implemented her design. That's right in line with my philosohpy which is: break from tradition when it suits you!

In this interpretation of the sweater, we chose non-traditional colors to show how a traditional design can be updated with a more contemporary feel. This sweater still has a classic look and style. If you want to be more outrageous, you could try using a very chunky yarn or use a solid for the main color and a self-striping or variegated yarn for the contrasting colors. The main point I'd like to make here is that you can work within a tradition and outside of the tradition at the same time, combining techniques and design elements that have been passed down through generations with modern and unique elements that spark your own creativity. It's all about not being afraid to experiment.

In this interpretation, we kept with the tradition of using black and white with red accents. Actually, we used gray because black doesn't photograph well. But the main idea was to create a traditional style Norwegian ski swetaer. The sweater design and placement of the motifs is the same as on the version with contemporary colors, but the resulting look is much more traditional. By reversing the colors in the adult and child sweaters, we show that you can be very creative with color placement. Also, the same basic sweater recipe was used for both sweaters. The large size was actually designed for a man, but when they put the magazine together, they decided to photograph it on a woman.

For more ideas on colors, check out the design that Kristi at Fiber Fool has been working on. She tested a bunch of different color combinations by drawing them on her computer (so she didn't have to make a dozen swatches!), and ended up with something quite traditional, but she used interesting motifs from different sources to spice it up:



It's not too late to sign up for the knitalong! We won't be getting our needles out until January. This month we'll be discussing yarn and color selections and ordering our copies of the book so we can be ready to work on our ski-headband gauge swatch after New Year's.

Cross posted to the my main blog.

Here are a few little Andean monedero change purses that some readers have made.

1) This one, by Heather is made from Knit Picks Wool of the Andes. She made it as a bottle holder for her son, which is just too cute. Heather has the details on Ravelry if you have an account there.



2) These bags were made by Deb and Kris. The bright one, by Deb, is made from Lion Brand Microspun, a DK micro-fiber acrylic, and the gray bag, by Kris, is made with handspun llama from her own animals.


You can make these bags in any size and weight of yarn. The change purses made in the Andes are usually pretty small, but you can use the recipe for this bag to make a purse of any size.

This Seaman's Scarf, from chapter 3 of Ethnic Knitting Discovery was designed by Helen at Knitting in the Shadows as part of my blog book tour.



Helen made some changes to the basic recipe -- and this is a wonderful part of the process -- and she explains all of her design and knitting decisions in detail in her blog post. She also includes several photos of the work in progress.

Here's a bit of background about seamen's scarves from the book:

Seamen’s scarves fit well with the nautical theme that we are following in our exploration of Dutch knitting. Although this type of scarf did not originate in the Netherlands, it’s been knitted there for more than a hundred years! The ends of a seaman’s scarf are traditionally knitted in garter stitch, but they can also be decorated with pattern stitches as I’m showing here. The center of the scarf is worked in ribbing so that it fits snugly around the neck.

I included this as a practice project, so readers could get some experience knitting texture patterns back and forth. I find that more difficult than knitting them in the round, because when you're on wrong-side rows, you can't really see what you're doing. So you have to trust the chart, or keep peeking over the top of your knitting to see the right-side. On most one-color sweaters, you work the upper body back and forth after you divide for the armholes, rather than cutting the armholes open. There's no reason you can't cut open a one-color sweater, it's just less common than cutting open colorwork sweatrs.