A Lovely Summer Sweater

Lumiere is the perfect warm-weather yarn--it's cottony, but pleasantly springy to knit and it doesn't stretch out of shape after you wear the sweater. I purchased the yarn on impulse at a LYS last winter. It had just come into the store and I bought all she had there.


I really wanted a summer cardigan and Lumiere turned out to be an inspired choice for the sweater I had in mind. I designed it with Knitware, which I prefer to the Sweater Wizard. I own them both, but Knitware is more appropriate for the types of projects I design and just seems more flexible to me.

The sweater is a simple cardigan. The body was knit semi-roundly in a single piece and turned at the front opening. The shoulders were joined using a 3-needle bind-off, then the sleeves were knit by picking up from the armhole and were knitted down to the wrist. Finally, I added a border by picking up stitches all around the opening.

Notice there is not a single seam anywhere in this sweater. When you bind off the edging, you are finished.

The sleeves and border are moss stitch, but I used Butterfly stitch for the body. This stitch is great fun to do, but you have to be very careful to leave plenty of slack when slipping the stitches.


Patterns

Moss Stitch

Row 1: (K1, P1) rep to end

Row 2: (P1, K1) rep to end

Butterfly Stitch

Multiple of 10 stitches plus 9

Rows 1, 3, 5, 7, 9: k2, *K5, sl 5 wyif, k5*, End sl 5, k2

Rows 2, 4, 6, 8: Purl

Row 10: P4. *The next stitch is the center of the slipped group. Insert the right needle down through the 5 loose strands, bring the needle up and put the 5 strands on the left needle, then purl the 5 strands AND the next stitch together as a single stitch. P9* End P4

Rows 11,12, 15, 17, 19: K7, * K5, sl 5 wyif, K5*, End sl 5, K7

Rows 12, 14, 16,and 18: Purl

Row 20: P9, *gather stitches as for Row 10, P9*