I share with many an infatuation with the BBC show “Call the Midwife”--not least because of its immaculately reproduced postwar fashions. Until they come out with a CtM-inspired book of knitting patterns (OMG, can you imagine??), or unless a particular garment is clearly made from an identifiable vintage or vintage-inspired pattern, reverse-engineering is the way to go. I got obsessed with this apple-green, lace-paneled pullover from Episode 6 of Season 3, and now I’m trying to replicate it…

6/7/14: I thought the lace pattern looked familiar, and was sure I’d find it in one of the Japanese stitch dictionaries that I have, but no such luck. Not in any of the 3 out of 4 Barbara Walker treasuries, either. Going to have to find the best images I can to work from and figure this out from scratch.

6/10/14: I’ve done some pretty extensive swatching, and come up with something that’s pretty close. (Although I just did another, clearer screen grab to put up on this project page, and have now realized the internal eyelet motif in the long lozenges is more complex in the original than in my replication…but whatevs.) That workshop on “creating your own stitch patterns” that I took with Janel Laidman at VKL back in 2011 is proving SO helpful here!

In the process, I actually worked up a cowl design with stacked variations of this motif that uses exactly one skein of KSH, so it was already worth the effort! (Pics and pattern will be coming soon for that.)

6/12/14: Now that I’ve got the lace motif more or less figured out, time to find yarn. Thank heavens for the advanced search functions in Ravelry! All the fingering-weight tweed yarns available on the market would have taken weeks to find before, but now they’re like two clicks away. The trick will be to find one in the same apple green (or do I even want that color, if this is something I’m going to wear myself??)

6/13/14: Yarn ordered. Went with Knit Picks Stroll Tweed, since I have had such good results with Stroll before in other projects. There’s a light green colorway, but it’s more of a dill or grass green--a bit more toward the brown end of the light green spectrum, whereas the original looks like its a bit more toward the yellow end. It’d probably look OK on me, but I liked the Thirst Heather color better--more of a teal blue-green. I ordered some Indigo Heather as well, since I might try to work this up in a cardigan variation too.

6/16/14: Yarn is here! Casting on for a whole mess of 1x1 ribbing this weekend…

6/27/14: Almost done with the third lace repeat, which looks like it hits across the fullest part of the bust. A few more rows to go before shaping the armholes and working front and back separately. Need to go look up formulas for sleeve-cap shaping next…

7/8/14: Body is done, as well as my first stab at the first sleeve. Going to baste it in place and see how the fit is , maybe take a few in-progress photos today too…

1/24/15: Finished this months ago, and have even made a second prototype (with minor fixes to things like sleeve length and sizing). FINALLY decided to take some pics, but discovered my camera was out of juice, so had to settle for crappy iPhone pics. Sorry about that! Better FO-tos coming soon, as time permits. Next step, writing up and grading the pattern…