endways

A festive hello, on the morning of the eve before new year’s eve! Here is my pullover pattern from Colour Compass: Endways, a colourful sweater you can knit from your box of Milarrochy Tweed, or indeed, from any other comparable selection of mini-skeins.

I’ve talked a lot about the balance that needs to be achieved, in a collection of this nature, between freedom and constraint (with a garment, that means the freedom of the knitter to play confidently with colour within the constraints of a design that’s workable in all sizes). When you are knitting a pullover in several colours across a repeating stripe pattern you do not want to run out of a particular shade when you hit the second sleeve. So careful careful consideration of the constraints of this garment were absolutely crucial before I even began: how much yarn would be needed for a pair of ribbed cuffs? A hem? A neckline? And what shape of pullover would be best? I settled on a garment style that I know works really well for different body shapes and sizes.

The silhouette I’ve used for Endways is essentially the same as the one I used for one of my favourite recent pullover designs, Smookie. This silhouette is slightly oversized, with tailored short-row shoulders that hug the body, and sleeves that can be knit to bracelet or full length.

If you look at the many beautiful sweaters, worn by many different beautiful knitters which have been knitted from this pattern, you’ll see just what a versatile and wearable garment shape this is. I knew that the smookie-shape would work really well with stripes instead of twisted stitches, so with my shape parameters set, I decided that a fairly simple stripe sequence, to which shades might be added or removed, would assist me with the yarn-quantity-estimation part of pattern grading.

As with the other patterns in this collection, the idea with Endways is for the knitter to develop their own unique palette and shade sequence. There are many ways of going about this, and there’s a chapter in the Colour Compass e-book exploring different methods of palette development. There’s also another section in which we provide charts for multiple palettes, in colour sequences that range from 13 to 19 shades.

But how would picking an individual palette work in practice? To find out, three knitters helped me with the development of this pattern: Maylin, Karin, and Alison – and it was fascinating to see the different ways in which they went about the process.

Maylin’s palette includes a bold selection of spicy pinks and reds, lying against other shades like Stockiemuir, Birkin, and Horseback Brown. She wanted her 14 shade palette to “read” visually as broader stripes, and when you look at her sweater from a distance, you can see how this works out in practice.

If you’d like to create a similar effect when developing your palette, try taking a photograph of a striped swatch against a blank background from a distance (before looking at it on your phone), or use a reducing glass (a nifty tool that quilters use to help them visualise an overall pattern). I find that a reducing glass is generally brilliant for enabling me to visualise patterns and palettes of all kinds, but simply seeing your swatch from a distance can really help.

All of our knitters challenged themselves when developing their palettes for this pullover, and Karin’s own personal challenge was to use yellow, which is not a shade to which she’s generally drawn.

In the Field Notes section of our Colour Compass ebook, Karin describes how she carefully incorporated Cowslip into her palette as part of the light section of a blue-green gradient. As you can see, this worked out brilliantly well!

Alison loves colour, and wanted to use as many bright, bold shades as she could.

Alison’s palette excludes the lighter neutrals, such as Hirst and Birkin, and really brings saturated colour to the fore. Hurrah! (I particularly love the transition between Horseback Brown, Thrift, and Cowslip, as well as the genius conjunction of Ardlui and Stockiemuir)

Our three knitters each did something very different with their stripe sequences and each pullover, as a consequence, looks very different. But I think you’ll agree that all three palettes are successful, in the sense that each sings with its own particular chromatic harmony, and looks great.

There are many excellent ways of developing a shade sequence. No way is the “right” way, and whatever method you gravitate towards, with just a little thought and swatching, the results are likely to look good. Just remember that my pattern constraints are there for a reason, and I’ve suggested setting aside three balls for the cuffs, hem, and neckline to ensure you aren’t disappointed by running out of yarn. There’s a broader exploration of our knitters’ shade selection process in the Field Notes section of the Colour Compass ebook. This and the other chapters will help you to discover a method of developing a palette that suits you, and to feel really confident with colour, whatever your shade preferences and personal style.

I’ll close by saying something about styling this pullover, which was a lot of fun! The pink-undertoned red of this linen dress worked really well with Maylin’s palette, and the full circle skirt was shown off superbly by a twirling Fenella!

I chose this dress of bluish green from the KDD wardrobe because I knew it was very much Karin’s style, as well as Iona’s

. . . and also had a super twirly skirt!

My Alison sweater styling was entirely guided by Alison.

She’d already shown me in her testing photos that a mustard skirt was a colour win against her Gloamin‘ hem, and Kendall rather enjoys a yellow dress.

As with all the other designs in the collection, our Colour Compass knitters have been absolutely brilliant in helping me develop this pattern, which offers a lot of scope for individual colour play with a very versatile, wearable sweater as the end result. And though I encourage you to experiment, if you would like to knit an Endways in exactly the same colours as Maylin, Alison or Karin, you’ll find charts for each of their shade sequences in the book’s Palette Picker section.

Our Colour Compass Knitalong (KAL) is about to begin, and if you’d like to knit any of the patterns from this collection together with us, with lots of camaraderie and support, please hop on over to our Ravelry group and join the fun. If you’d like to purchase a Colour Compass yarn box or e-book, there’s still plenty of time, as the KAL will be continuing at its own leisurely pace over the next few months. And the Colour Compass patterns can be knitted with any 4ply / fingering weight yarn (not just Milarrochy Tweed) so please do feel free to join us with any of your advent mini-skeins.

I hope you are enjoying the festive season. I’ll be back tomorrow with a post to wind up 2023.