Designed this sweater myself during coronavirus down time. Designed as I went inspired by cross stitch sampler motifs and other sources, edited to fit the repeat size I wanted and some details I wanted. I’m a trial lawyer, usually wearing more classic designs and hand-knits, but it’s spring and we are stuck indoors much of the time and the palette was inspired by nature at The Sea Ranch in northern Sonoma where I live part-time.

The theme of peacocks is from my native India, where peacocks are not in zoos but just wander around in Punjab where I was born. They are a common theme in fine Indian handmade textiles. I have been collecting peacock images and motifs for inspiration for years, not sure what to do with them because peacocks are complex images and the size of the images does not lend itself to traditional-scale fair isle or intarsia knitting.

The sweater took about three weeks to design and knit, with the last week of that re-doing the upper yoke and finishing work on cuffs, weaving in ends, blocking, etc.

I aided size 4 for colorwork and on the body size 3 for rows with no colorwork. I used size 4 on the sleeves throughout.

Body 246-252 stitches give or take to fit repeats. Sleeves from 87 down to 52 at cuffs. Decreases evenly to fit motif repeats. Neck on second try (knit bottom up above large yoke peacock motif) reduced from 315 to 210 before feather motif, then 140, then six short row sets, then final decrease to 130 stitches for corrugated neck.

There are three rows of plain knitting between motifs. I used size 3 needles for the stockinette, 4 for the stranded knitting other than top of yoke, which is stranded on 3s. Sleeves are knit throughout on 4s with no changing for the stockinette because I didn’t see enough of a difference on the sleeves to make needle changes worthwhile.

I decided not to use the peacock motifs on the sleeves for a design execution reason — the motifs are large, and the sleeves decrease evenly down and it would be difficult to fit whole motifs as the size decreased. Also, long floats, which are there in the body, do not work well in small circumference pieces. I tried to match the colors on the sleeves to the large motifs, and also match the peeries on the body to the cuffs.

I did a series of short rows at the bottom of the yoke for shaping, and this is a design challenge in an all-over sweater because with only three rows between motifs, i needed to have a stranded short row section. So the light blue on the back and arms, but not the front, is six rows deep, with three rows before and after.

Colors used of Dyed in the Wool: Main colors were Ruination and Melancholia for the peacocks; Kimono, Stay Out of the Forest, and a touch of Tangled Up in Blue for the Peeries and cuffs. Clocking in at 460 or so grams, and having used a little over 5 skeins of Wilder which are about 60 grams, I estimate I used nearly a full skein of Ruination and Melancholia. Total about 150 grams of colored yarn, equivalent to about three skeins. I cut out certain parts of the accent colors for the peeries to balance out and get the colors I wanted for good contrast.

My original top down design was made up as I went and after blocking, the yoke ended up too deep for my taste though it was perfectly passable. I put so much effort into this and it wasn’t quite right so unraveled the top above the large yoke motif, and then knit it top up with more rapid increases and a single motif, medium sized, of a peacock feather I designed myself. I used the opportunity of the do-over to add my initials and the year into the back of neck short rows, the perfect place for them!

The hem is a split hem, slightly shorter than I normally do because the sweater was already longer. I used a tubular cast off for all the hems. The colored portion of ribbing is typically three different colors or sections of color of different yarns to achieve a rapid gradient look.

A note about yarns. In the skein, and while knitting, the Dyed-in-the-Wool yarn is substantially thinner than the sport weight Wilder, which was of a good consistency and finish throughout. After long soaking and blocking (and a lot of rinsing because the Melancholia gave off a lot of excess dye), the Spincycle bloomed to more of a sport weight. I would call it borderline between fingering and sport, closer to fingering TBH.