This pattern can be found in Knitty First Fall 2024 published on 12 June 2024. I am so happy to have a pattern in Knitty!!

This is a straightforward pattern but the technique may be unfamiliar. You can spice it up if you want to by adding extra color blocks; consider this pattern as a canvas to be as colorful as you like.

Some years ago my niece asked me to knit her a chunky sweater with leftovers, to be “as wild as possible”. I divided all my DK leftovers into warm and cool colors, mixed them all up and knitted her a sweater using the yarn double, with a diagonal stripe across the front and back, with warm colors on one side and cool colors on the other side. In order to do this in the round, (I hate seaming) I thought that I had invented a clever new technique. As with so many things, there is nothing new under the sun, and so many knitters before me have invented several different ways to knit “intarsia in the round”, most of which are neater and simpler than mine was!

Fast forward a few years, and somehow I find in my stash a large quantity of beautiful Garthenor Organic DK yarn in 7 different colors. There is not enough of any color to do a whole sweater, or even half a sweater. I put this down to a failure of intelligent thought on my part, and an inability to resist bright colors. So I came up with the idea to use all of them in one pullover using a better construction technique than I had used in my niece’s pullover.

This garment is knitted from the bottom up using “intarsia in the round”. This is quite simple really, essentially you are making one piece back and forth, but joining the sides together as you go. This is done by creating a stitch using a yarnover at the beginning of each row, and working this together with the last stitch of the row. The sweater is a plain, relaxed fit, drop shoulder construction. After working the lower body, you divide for front and back, which are worked flat, and then join the shoulders with a three needle bind-off. Tapered sleeves are picked up and worked top down, continuing with “intarsia in the round”, and finished with a cuff worked in the round.