Project of the Month: Soldotna Sweater
The days are warming up at last and cool summer evenings will soon be upon us. It’s time to put away our winter wooly sweaters and turn to our lighter weight knits. Enter the cropped, short-sleeved sweater.
Soldotna sweater knit in Chester Knits sport in colourways Hematite, Pussywillow and Sundown.
This month we are featuring the Soldotna sweater! A cropped, short-sleeved colourwork sweater, intended for DK weight yarn that is easy to knit and easy to wear. A great handmade wardrobe building block, the Soldotna sweater is a pattern by Caitlin Hunter (Boyland Knitworks) that is written for a cropped length but can be lengthened as desired. It’s knit top down with a colourwork yoke, followed by some nice easy knitting in the round and finishes off with ribbed sleeve cuffs. Because of the cropped length, this sweater knits up in a fraction of the time that other sweaters in DK weight do.
Gabby, our Community Coordinator, knit this one up in our super soft Chester Knits sport yarn (along with a little bit of Hedgehog DK from her stash). The pattern calls for four skeins of the Chester Knits sport, which knits up perfectly to meet the gauge in the pattern (which is DK). That said, make sure to do a gauge swatch before starting to ensure your gauge matches the pattern! The Chester Knits yarn is special, it has beautiful depth of colour, is incredibly soft and is one of our favourite yarns to knit with (check out this recent post on Chester Knits yarn). The Chester Knits sport is 100% superwash merino and comes in 283 y (259m) skeins. You can of course swap Chester Knits out for any of our DK weight yarns in the online store.
Some of the Chester Knits colourways that we love.
The only modification made to this version of the Soldotna was that the colour work wasn’t continued through the main part of the body. The original pattern includes a small colourwork pattern that continues until the bottom hem.
Short sleeve sweaters are simply wardrobe magic. They can be worn so many ways – over a dress, layered with a collared shirt, paired with your favourite jeans, or with a pair of high waisted pants or a skirt. They give you freedom to play with proportion, layering and texture in your daily outfits. Instagram’s #soldotnacrop hashtag will show you a ton of great styling options as well as give you lots of colour inspiration. We highly recommend browsing Instagram and Ravelry when you embark on a new knitting project, there are so many things to learn from all the knitters that have completed the pattern already.
Soldotna sweater styled over a simple black linen dress.
A short note about cropped sweaters. If you haven’t tried one yet, don’t dismiss them. There are lots of different styles, silhouettes and yarn weights that can be used for cropped sweaters. If colourwork yokes aren’t your thing but you want to give a cropped sweater a try, take a look at some of these fantastic patterns as well:
- Kala Crop by Megan Nodecker (short sleeved, single colour with lace work top)
- Ursa by Jacqueline Cieslak (long sleeved, single colour with some easy brioche)
- Love Note by Tin Can Knits (sleeve length short, 3/4 or long, some lace work)
So, leave sleeve island behind, come bask in the sun with us at short-sleeve cropped sweater cove. There’s a nice cool breeze and your new sweater is the perfect thing to keep you warm.
