Chris’ TFA sweater knit in PureWash Worsted in Charcoal and Natural.
Guys, would you just look at this gorgeous man who knit himself this incredibly badass sweater!? He’s a total rock star in my books. He had a very specific concept in mind with this sweater design - and yes, he designed the entire sweater himself! He spent the summer working out the text fonts on a beading app he downloaded to his phone and I really think that he has a gift for charting out fonts. Look how crisp and clean yet super interesting all his different text styles are! It’s a gift.
He knit this sweater in pieces and then seamed it (ok, full disclosure, I seamed it because I love mattress stitch, but he totally could have). Knitting it flat made all that intarsia colourwork possible and also means that the seams add a nice amount of stability to an adult garment like this. Chris finds that his sweaters tend to grow in length as he wears them. I think that seams are the way to go for him. We used the Flax pattern by Tin Can Knits as a starting point for the stitch counts.
I’m so proud of Chris for tackling this ambitious knit. When he told me what he was planning to do, I hate to admit it, but I wasn’t entirely supportive. I thought that he was biting off more than he could chew, that he wasn’t ready for intarsia, that there was a good chance it didn’t work out. It felt like a lot of work to center all those different motifs. But MAN am I glad that he ignored my exasperated sighs and just went for it! It taught me a really valuable lesson, ok, two lessons.
#1: Never underestimate Chris.
#2: Don’t overthink it! The more you learn about a craft the more you learn about “right” and “wrong” ways to do things and those limitations that we put on ourselves can be crippling. Chris came into this project with no pre-conceived notions about how it was “supposed” to be done - he just had an idea and made it happen in whatever way worked best for him. Even though I try to fight against it, I know that I suffer from self-imposed knitting “rules”. Watching Chris work through this sweater and having conversations with him where I would say “well, you can’t do that in a sweater” and he would say “why not?” and then I would have to concede that there was no good reason why he couldn’t do whatever the heck he wanted was a welcome wake up call!
Chris is a rockstar and I love his new sweater. He also knit his hat! In case anyone was worried that we might lose Chris in a snowstorm this winter, fear not, there is zero chance of that happening with this shining beacon of a hat on his head. His hat is the Roku hat pattern by Olga Buraya-Kefelian and it’s such a great beanie.
Knit something adventurous this year! The world needs more badass knitters.