Here’s one last Idea Log for 2015, and it will be the first sweater I’m obsessing about in 2016 — Do I just have a heightened awareness of them or are Cowichan-inspired sweaters suddenly everywhere? I can’t open an indie boutique email or flip through a mainstream catalog without seeing them. The one that recently got torn out and taped to my wall is among the least authentic — that blue and white number up top, currently for sale at J.Crew. (It’s called Abstract Fair Isle Sweater, and has about as much in common with true Fair Isle as with Cowichan, but there you go.) I’m still dying to cast on another Cowichan-ish sweater after finishing my knitalong vest, and although it continues to be spooky 75-degree tornado weather here, I know we’re headed for that time of year when I’ll be wearing my Bellows every day and wishing I had another super woolly shawl collar cardigan to alternate with. Before casting on my vest, I contemplated doing it in black and navy or ivory and navy. As much as I love all-neutral colorwork, I also swoon hard for blue and white. (Some notable examples here.) It’s like Delft knitwear or something — so dreamy. So I keep gazing at this J.Crew cardigan and wanting a version, and over the weekend it dawned on me that it could be as simple and knitting Andrea Rangel’s Knitter’s Dude in ivory and navy (two colors instead of three) and perhaps doing the wide stripes as a pair of thinner stripes to play up the linework quality. I might want to bulk up the gauge, though — I’m thinking Lettlopi in colors 0051 and 9420 (as pictured via Tolt). And then of course with a zipper instead of the buttons, because zippers forever and ever amen.
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PREVIOUSLY in Idea Log: Perfect outfit No. 1
