I have a few new patterns that came out for Quince & Co. last week and I’m so pleased to finally be able to share these with you! Pictured above are the round-yoked Dalis pullover and the Riva hat and mittens, all knit in worsted weight Lark. They’re part of the Sea Smoke collection which also features two beautiful patterns by Bristol Ivy (the patterns can each be purchased individually or the whole collection is available as an ebook).

Both my patterns and Bristol’s in the Sea Smoke collection have inspiration rooted in tradition, but we hope you’ll agree that the pieces themselves are very wearable in anyone’s everyday wardrobe. When I designed Dalis I had in mind several different sources of inspiration found in Scandinavian folk art, among them woven ribbons, klokkestrenger, or “bell pulls” (which are long, narrow pieces of decorative embroidery), and rosemåling certainly inspired the color palette I ended up with. Dalis uses one of my favorite constructions: knit from the bottom up, with body and arms knit first before they’re joined together to work the yoke. Short row shaping at the back dips the yoke for a comfortable fit around the neck.

When Pam, Quince’s founder, first approached me about working with them on patterns, she mentioned noticing that I like to work with colorwork in my designs – and given the massive palette of colors to choose from in Quince’s core wool line, they make it very easy to want to design more colorwork! Because Dalis uses five colors total, there’s an incredible amount of room for creativity in color choice and changing just one color can give the whole pattern a different flavor – so I was thrilled when the Quince team decided to swatch different color combinations for the Quince blog and I’m in love with all of them. Along with their beautiful swatches, that blog post contains some excellent information about swatching for stranded colorwork, so I highly recommend checking it out (those are Leila’s gorgeous swatches pictured above, but the blog post contains several more combos).

I’m also very pleased with the Riva hat and mittens, which are simpler with a bolder motif, but knit in these colors they’re a great match for Dalis. As fall collections have been coming out, however, I think one of my favorite things has been seeing echoes of the main diamond motif pop up elsewhere this season – a confluence of designers unknowingly working with the same muse, perhaps. Within the Sea Smoke collection, Bristol’s beautiful Brooke pullover features textured diamonds around the yoke, the knit-purl cousins of Riva’s diamonds. And when Jared Flood’s Spearheads was released in this fall’s Brooklyn Tweed collection, the white-on-blue men’s version caught my eye right away since I knew Riva was soon being released. Three designers in three different cities working away on our patterns, having no idea of the similar thread running through our pieces… maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s something quite beautiful in that.

The Quince team also put together a great post for Riva about how to make decisions when substituting colors, as the white color Egret is unfortunately out of stock at the moment. I’d also recommend checking out that very informative post right here.

The individual patterns as well as the whole ebook are available now either on Ravelry or on the Quince & Co. website.