Ever since Vanessa Jackman posted these photos on her blog, this Vanessa Bruno sweater has been getting a lot of attention on Pinterest and elsewhere. It’s totally killer. It’s also a case of another $400 half-synthetic sweater that’s easily replicated by any crafty knitter. If you look at Asos’ shots, where it’s worn with even more ease, you can see a few more of the details, especially the long ribbing at the cuffs. And apparently it has a split hem, although none of the photos really shows that. It’s a very simple sweater, the most distinctive feature of which is the raglans. And where have we seen almost identical raglans before? The totally amazing and highly coveted Sweatshirt Sweater pattern at the Purl Bee, which requires only the most minor of modifications to become the Vanessa Bruno. One: skip the kangaroo pocket. Two: knit longer ribbing at the cuffs. Three: keep knitting the neck until you’ve got a turtleneck instead of a crew.
The question is yarn. The Purl Bee sweater is written for worsted-weight yarn, and the Bruno looks more like an aran or chunky to me. So if you’re slightly more ambitious you could change the gauge. (Or just improvise it top-down.) But I think choosing a yarn with the same salt-and-pepperiness of the grey yarn used for the Bruno is more important than the gauge. It needs to have coloration along the lines of Joseph Galler’s Prime Alpaca in Mist Grey, but 100% alpaca seems too weighty for a big sweater like this. Anyone know the perfect yarn?
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Photos © Vanessa Jackman, used with permission