lilias day

Good morning, and happy Friday, everyone! I’ve a new design to show to you – Lilias Day

I knitted two pullovers over the festive period, featuring the same Selbu motif. In Orchle, I used the motif as an allover pattern around the bottom of the pullover . . .

. . . and in Lilias Day, the motif features at the top of the pullover, around a circular yoke.

I love developing yoke charts, and this one was particularly fun to work on. I used a basic shaping method that I first developed for Epistrophy and which yoke designs like Jibbie also deploy. Rather than being fitted in between vertical motifs, or on the plain shaping rounds that separate the horizontal pattern bands of some yokes, here each decrease is integrated into the pattern so that it retains both vertical and horizontal continuity.

I really enjoy designing yoke patterns in this way, and am pleased with how this one has worked out.

As you know, I often knit sweaters with particular outfit styles in mind, and I wanted to make this one slightly cropped, so that I could wear it over a long dress . . .

Not everyone wants a crop, though, and so there are two lengths (cropped and standard) given in the pattern, which is designed across an inclusive range of twelve sizes.

I am pleased with my new pullover, and also enjoy the outfit with which I styled it . . .

I was determined to pair Lilias Day with this particular dress, but I will be honest, though: a light and floaty thing is not the most practical garment to be sporting in a frozen field in January.

But there’s always the option of just keeping moving while Tom shoots the photos.

Or jiggling about to keep warm.

We had fun anyway, with the bonus of being just a stone’s throw from home, and a nice cup of tea.

So what, you ask is Lilias Day? Well, it’s is a festival that’s celebrated annually in the local Renfrewshire village of Kilbarchan, which is the birthplace of Mary Barbour (who you may remember I celebrated in a square of our Balance for Better blanket). Held at the height of summer, as part of the Lilias Day celebrations, the village’s bridges and porches are traditionally decorated with floral garlands . . . and this is a yoke designed around motifs of floral arches.

Like Orchle, I knitted Lilias Day in this rather satisfying combination of Squall and Crowdie, and really love the two-tone feel of these natural sheep shades. That said, as soon as I’d finished knitting this pullover, I began to wonder how Lilias Day might look in a much more colourful palette, and so I’m currently knitting another version in different shades and to the standard length. I’m definitely enjoying a knitting roll at the moment, which reminds me a little of the time I made so many different iterations of Carbeths a couple of years ago – let’s see where I end up!

We have Lilias Day kits in the KDD shop (each of which contains enough yarn for a pullover of standard length) and the pattern is also available as an individual download from the KDD shop or Ravelry.

Happy knitting!