The 11th-Hour Sweater: Introducing Malmo

Bright cheerful colors, quick knitting, and a sweater in a weekend? That’s the short version of my new Malmo Sweater, published today as part of the HollaKnits Winter 2016 collection.

Malmo is inspired by the bright colors and bold shapes of Scandinavian designs—cheerful prints and repeating motifs that catch the eye and make me happy.

I was also inspired to do something  outside of my wheelhouse—I don’t have as much of a design background as the rest of the Design Team (yet) and while we have a great collection of patterns for Berroco Macro™, we don’t have any garments. So when I saw the submission call for Holla Knits‘ Winter issue, I really wanted to challenge myself in a big way. Big yarn to the rescue! I sat down with a handful of colors in Macro, started knitting, and Malmo came off the needles in record time! I was recovering from a bad cold when knitting this, so it was all Knitflix and chill for me. I started watching a tv show with hour-long episodes on Netflix, and if my math is correct (cold medicine makes you question everything), I knit this whole sweater, start to finish, in just over 11 episodes. (Not all in one go—there was a lot of sleeping, too.)

Malmo is knit from the top down in a circular yoke construction. The colorwork in the yoke is charted, but they’re very easy charts, perfect for anyone just diving into the world of colorwork knitting. You’ll want to catch your floats on the pink and yellow rounds (here’s a video demonstrating how to carry floats along the back of the work). I left it sleeveless so that you could layer this under a coat if necessary—though it’s so warm you could probably just slip on a long-sleeve tee and be fine most days. What really surprised me about the finished garment is how lightweight Berroco Macro is! It’s like wearing a cloud! A bright, colorful cloud.

One of the things I always find tricky about circular yoke sweaters is choosing a size. As with choosing a size for any sweater, a lot of it comes down to personal preference. I like my sweaters to fit somewhat snug under the arms, so I knit them to fit with negative ease. But as you can see, they also look great with positive ease! The model shown in the magazine is probably wearing this sweater with about 8″ of positive ease. I’m wearing it with about 2″ of negative ease. If you fall in between sizes, big yarn comes to the rescue again—on a size 15 (10 mm) needle, Berroco Macro got about 2 stitches to the inch—so if you want to add an inch, just cast on two stitches to the body when it’s time to bind off stitches for the arms!

You can purchase the Malmo Sweater PDF from the HollaKnits website, but be sure to check out the other great patterns included in this collection of Holla Knits! Jean Chung’s Winter Forest sweater is lovely with it’s asymmetrical hems and staghorn cables. Fatimah Hinds’ Modcast Sweater is a cool mash-up of colors, textures, and cable patterns. And Kerry Bullock-Ozkan’s Tilework cardigan is a sweet, cropped cardi with happy colorwork. 

You can also purchase the entire collection, along with insightful articles, for only $10.