Sweater designed for the Webs Expert Knitting Program Sweater Construction class with Erin Holman.

Selected a cowl neck shape using Barbara Walker’s Embossed Twining Leaf motif surrounded by eyelet mock cable columns. This panel combination will be on the front and back. The mock cable will also be used on the sleeves.

BW’s vine design is dear to me after using it in one of my first published patterns, the Big River Vine Poncho, and always loving leaf lace stitches.

The sweater is knitted from the bottom up using Alternating Cable Cast-On from page 49 of Leslie Ann Bestor’s Cast On Bind Off and US 5 needles for the k1p1 ribbing. Matched the cast-on on the bottom and wrist ribbing with a tubular bind-off around the cowl neck.

We’re using Shirley Paden’s Knitwear Design Workshop as our foundation for the class. I bought Shirley Paden’s book years ago and was too intimidated to dig into her process, so this class and Erin have been the much-needed guides. The powerful measuring, schematic and graphing processes have all been demystified and now I feel like I’ve been given the gate keys to the world of quality knit design. No exaggeration here!

Writing up the pattern for my own use so that I can capture it for guidance with my WEKP capstone project coming up next and just in case I want to refine and publish it later. I can see wanting to make this sweater again! Draft of pattern: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fqle_s4myH9aBaayzuxYq...

Also, this yarn rocks. It has the softness and drape of alpaca, but the wool gives it more definition and shape. Best of all worlds.