Flower Garden Pullover

This pullover from the Spring 2009 issue of Verena Knitting caught my eye immediately. When my birthday rolled around, I used one of my gift certificates to stock up on some amazing aran-weight cotton in a nice light blue. The knitting was a joy, since the yarn is so soft and fluffy, and went quickly, because of the heavier weight of the yarn.

I followed the pattern as written, for all of the shaping, and I'm pretty happy with the fit. The place that I began to change things was when I started the finishing. The pattern is written to have a knitted picot hem at the cuffs, where you begin knitting the sleeves. Then the neck and bottom hem have a crocheted picot hem, added after the pieces are seamed. I wasn't sure why the pattern writers would use two different picot styles on one sweater, but I gave it a try. The crochet picots looked nothing like the sleeve picots, so I ripped it back and decided instead to pick up stitches along the neck and bottom edge to knit a picot hem like the other one. The one at the neck edge is shallower, and the one at the bottom hem is deeper. Alas, I forgot EZ's rule about making hems 10% less stitches than the main knitting, so they bell out a bit from the body of the sweater.


I am not completely happy with the sleeves, which is partly my own fault. They could be an inch longer, but shame on me for not measuring more accurately before I began the shaping of the sleeve cap. The part where they bell out could also stand to be a bit wider and a bit longer. But now I'm just nitpicking.

I had finished the knitting and seaming on this for weeks before I finally picked it up again for the final touches. When it came to adding the embroidery, I also changed it up. The original had a nice garden scene of flowers and leaves across the belly of the sweater. It was the embroidery that made this sweater so unique and eye-catching. I didn't think I need to attract attention to my belly, however, so I decided to make some little flowers along one shoulder of the sweater, instead.

When the weather cools off a bit, I will have more of a chance to pull this one out.