Sometimes you are just drawn to a particular design and having knitted several Joji Locatelli patterns in the past, I knew that this would be a style I would enjoy knitting but also wear lots. I was a little put off initially that it was only available in a copy of Pom Pom magazine but there were lots of other gorgeous patterns in there too and it was one of those moments when I just had to have it!

I started this knit in February when we were in the middle of a particularly hard lock down when we had lots of snow so it was great to be able to hunker down and work on a larger project.

My usual dyeing style is much more highly variegated but I had been working on a range of semi solid yarns which would be ideal for this type of project where there is an intricate lace pattern. However, even when I dye a semi solid colour I like to add a few speckles to keep things interesting and I particularly love ‘Mushroom’. Its a hard colour to photograph and describe as it’s one that changes depending on what you pair it with. Sometimes it looks beige / brown and other times more of a mauve / purple with pops of copper and brown speckles. It’s a great neutral colour and I thought it would work well for the lacework sections.

It took me a little while to determine what my yarn requirements would be as the recommended yarn had a different yardage. Also a third colour was used for the collar and cuffs but I decided to just hold a strand of the Mushroom fingering weight yarn with the Aubergine mohair for those parts and it worked out just fine and ties it all together nicely.

I was quite surprised at how little yarn I actually used - only 60g mohair and 130g of fingering weight yarn. It does make for a lovely lightweight top but it still warm too - perfect for a Scottish ‘summer’. I chose to make elbow length sleeves but as I have so much yarn left over, I think I will wear it like this for the summer and then make the sleeves longer for winter.

I started knitting the size 4 (45 3/4”) but realised that it was coming up quite big so switched to a size 3 when it came to separating for the sleeves. I had to be careful to get the stitch counts right for the lace work repeats to work out for the body so I ended up with less cast on stitches under the arms. This is where I love to refer to the projects within Ravelry as I can see whether anyone else has done the same before I make any changes and it seemed to be a common adjustment to make. I think because the sweater it is designed to be quite oversized with 4-6” positive ease, to fit me in the bust it was going to be far too big in the body. This is something I find a lot in other patterns too though.

The pattern itself was expertly written as always and a lovely pattern to work through. I loved the intricacy of the lace and I needed to concentrate fully on those 10 stitch repeats at first but after a couple of stripes the pattern was fairy intuitive. What I particularly loved was that once you had completed a lace stripe, you had a plain knit section to work with the mohair - perfect for all those zoom meetings!

If the thought of mohair puts you off, I’ve seen quite a few of these sweaters done with just fingering weight yarn too.

I’m delighted with how it turned out and I would highly recommend this pattern if you want to knit a top down sweater that it going to keep you interested - just one more stripe certainly kept me going! I think a navy and cream stripe would be lovely too…..

Pattern Link