I have a very big piece of news today: I’m incredibly honored to have a design in the newest guest designer collection by Brooklyn Tweed, Wool People Volume 6. I’ve been a longtime fan of Brooklyn Tweed patterns and I fell in love with their yarns this year, so it’s a dream come true to have a pattern in the collection. My design is a seamless bottom-up pullover called Sundottir, with a round yoke featuring stranded colorwork. Those of you who have been following the blog for a long time may remember a sweater I knit for myself three years ago with a similar name; it was the first sweater I’d ever knit without a pattern, and when I finished it, I hoped to turn it into a pattern eventually. Better late than never, right?

I met Jared (of Brooklyn Tweed) at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival in Tacoma, Washington earlier this year, around the time BT was starting to put ideas together for Wool People 6. When Jared invited me to submit a few ideas, Sundottir was the first submission I put together. I was thrilled when it was the idea the team decided to go with, because I couldn’t have imagined a better way to finally release this design as a pattern. My prototype has seen a lot of wear as my go-to sweater, and it’s traveled the world with me. It’s pretty near and dear to my heart.

I made a few improvements to the design as I transitioned from prototype to pattern. The original sweater had no shaping to dip the yoke so that the neck opening was higher in the back and lower in the front, so the pattern features short row shaping before and after the stranded colorwork to make the yoke height taller in the back for a more comfortable fit. The original yoke chart was a repeat of 16 stitches, making it difficult to grade for different sizes, so I tweaked the chart a little bit to make it an 8-stitch repeat. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out! The sweater is also worked on smaller needles than my prototype was, so that the colorwork is easier to knit (I had trouble keeping my strand tension even on the yoke of the prototype because of the larger needle size on the original). All in all, I think the changes I made are all improvements that make a more comfortable, versatile pullover than the original. I might have to knit myself a new one out of Shelter in Almanac and Snowbound, although I love the muted palette of the sample I knit for Brooklyn Tweed (in Truffle Hunt and Fossil). Truffle Hunt is one of the Brooklyn Tweed yarn colors that seems to get used less, but I loved working with it – it’s full of depth and the blue flecks are just gorgeous. It’s a really rich and beautiful color in person.

As written, the sweater is intended to be worn with no ease or negative ease, though I think it looks great with a little bit of positive ease as well (as seen on the Brooklyn Tweed models). I got a quick snap of myself in the sample before I sent it off, so you can see what it looks like with a little less ease (there’s about a half inch of negative ease at the bust when I’m wearing it):

The list of designers for Wool People 6 is quite impressive, so I’m incredibly flattered to be among them. You can check out the rest of the patterns for Wool People 6 and view the lookbook on the Brooklyn Tweed website, and you can view the full details for Sundottir on the Ravelry page here. Thank you to Jared and Brooklyn Tweed for letting me be a part of this collection.

All photos copyright Brooklyn Tweed except the last two photos, which are mine.