One of the pleasures of working on my Knitting Season collection was allowing myself some space to develop ideas and experiment creatively with garment shapes and styles. For a few years, I’d been wanting to design a colourwork allover with a side-to-side construction that was knitted as one long tube, using steeked openings for the neck and body – and my Sleeve Island design gave me the opportunity to do just that. My Sleeve Island sample was a huge amount of fun to make, and I knitted it in two-tone monochrome shades that recalled some of the Faroese and Estonian garments that I’d found inspiring when designing it.
I used Milarrochy Tweed shades Bruce and Birkin for the colourwork, and added a pop of Buckthorn for the cuffs and edging.
I love the moody, atmospheric shots of Jane wearing Sleeve Island that feature in our Knitting Season book . . .
. . . but I have occasionally found myself wondering how Sleeve Island might look when knitted up in the full, colourful Milarrochy Tweed palette. Yesterday, thanks to my friend Liz, I found out!
Liz’s Sleeve Island uses the 16 shades of Milarrochy Tweed from our sampler pack. Her sweater has 4 complete sets of 16 stripes, knitted from right to left. Each shade appears twice in each pair of adjacent stripes as background and contrast.
Liz feels there were some stripes where she might have achieved more tonal contrast, but she loves the overall effect – particularly the shifts between the very distinct stripes and her sweater’s more muted areas.
Liz adjusted the increase and decrease rate (to accomodate slight differences in her row gauge) and decided to minimise the edging at the neck and waist because she likes the effect of the vertical stripes without any obvious edge.
I like the way these cheery stripes look too! I love it when someone else’s knitting enables me to see something I’ve designed anew – and Liz’s fabulously colourful Sleeve Island has certainly done that. Cheerful colour is definitely what’s needed at the moment – perhaps it’s time to sail away to Sleeve Island once again, and knit myself another?
Thanks for sharing your wonderful project, Liz!
KDD & Co 
oooo… I love it!
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I LOVE this sweater, both in its original incarnation and as a color celebration. I think I crave this sweater…
I am a crocheter, and since I began hooking seriously 7 years ago as a form of self soothing while my daughter was in and out of doctor’s offices and treatment, I decided to focus on gaining as much mastery in the craft as I could, learning techniques and skills by at first making thousands of sample squares that were turned into blankets and shawls and hats to donate to any program that needed them. I gradually learned to follow more complicated patterns and branched into garments. It worked on all fronts, transforming the most terrifying period of our lives into a time of exploration, learning and creation. When my daughter got better, I began designing and making garments, for my family and friends. They say mastery takes at least 10 years, and that seems to be about right in my case- I’m definitely very competent, and I put my art and design education to good use in my efforts, but I still have things to learn and make.
But now, I find all the things that get me excited are knit. For a while I entertained myself by figuring out how to recreate knit patterns I found intriguing in crochet, but sometimes, I just want to make something and skip the trial and error and calculations. Your knitting book is always beckoning to me. This design may push me to take the leap. Thanks for what is turning into one of my favorite reads of the day!
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I totally agree, Kathleen – there’s definitely a time for learning and exploration, and a time to skip the calculations! Admire your crochet skills (I am a fascinated novice).
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Quite a difference! I prefer the monochrome shades for me but liz looks great in her happy colours! I have done a side to side sweater, a Norwegian pattern and love it.
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Just got inspired. Fabulous jumper when shown in colour. Thank you for sharing.
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‘Tis beautiful, but too, too short for me. Sadly this style will not suit my body type.
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Jacqueline How about adding an extra separate band down to the hips attached by an I-cord might overcome the jumper being too short for you
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Couldn’t you just substantially widen/lengthen the middle part of the tube? That’s what I’ll do if I attempt to recreate this in crochet in some fashion.
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Another option is to pick up stitches around the bottom and knit a wide band for more length. I just did that with a sweater of this shape, which is really fun to make. I added about 5″ more since I too prefer a longer sweater. It came out beautifully.
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Yes, first thing I thought was I’d have to add a wide band at the bottom! It’s not just not having a midriff bearing type figure, (which I sadly no longer do), but the wanting to constantly tug it down to where it should be. 😄
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It’s beautiful.
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Wow!!
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Love these so much!
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OMG! That is absolutely stunning! Am looking for a really good and slightly challenging project to get my teeth into and this might well be it!
Need to finish two more almost done projects first but, ooh, this is something to look forward to.
Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!!
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The sleeve island is a beautiful jumper both colourways, the patterns are exquisite 😍. For me it would certainly be a challenge as I have never knitted myself anything in 4 ply , I am not experienced to extend the knit to make it longer as I suit jumpers with a bit more length. Thank you Kate and Liz for sharing your amazing knitting and patterns
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What a jumper! Great work, Liz and thanks for sharing, Kate.
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Thank you, Kate! I loved knitting this sweater. Hopefully we’ll have a few more chilly days so I can get some wear out of it.
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I love these jumpers but not the crop length
I would love to have a longer version or at least some idea of how much extra wool to order
I know the calculation to work this out myself but unless I already have the yarn it cannot be done pre order and there is a risk of running out and not being able to get extra in the same dye lot.
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