How To
Adventure Knitting
We always say there’s always something new to learn in knitting. We say it because it’s true!
Even a venerable workhorse of a knitter, who feels like she has seen it all and done it all, or at least heard of it all—can find herself in terra incognita, and be dazzled by what she sees.
The adventure started, as many of my adventures do, on Instagram. Scrolling along, a tiny cardigan popped out of the hedgerow and enchanted me.
I mean, look at it.
Erin Guimond—@PickyFemme on Instagram—is an artist and knitter based in Vancouver. If you dive into her Instagram, you’ll find a series of these wee collage cardigans for babies and children, along with a lot of other dreamy, original knitting. Her work takes my breath away.
I stared at the collage sweaters and kept going back to them, trying to decipher how Erin’s imagination had worked itself out on the needles.
Each sweater is a mix of stranded colorwork motifs worked flat, with intarsia images placed almost like stickers, making the term collage very apt indeed. I loved the whimsy, I loved Erin’s amazing eye and color sense. Most of all, I responded to the emotional power—the heart that was required to choose the specific motifs, to make or find the charts, to manage all those strands of yarn, and to finish these pieces so deftly.
As it happens, I know a little girl—and her mom—who would love one. I felt the call to stop, drop, and knit a tiny collage cardigan of my own. You know the feeling—it’s a great feeling.
So I jumped into Picky Femme’s Instagram highlights, where Erin generously shares how-to information such as the basic sweater pattern she starts with, and progress shots and videos that document her process.
Here’s my attempt. A size 4/6-ish cardigan, with sleeve stitches held on string.
Front:
The little gray shape on the left front will be a mouse, I promise.
Back:
This project meant two weekends in a deep knitting reverie, with lots of hunting and pecking for charts of motifs (I bought a bunch of kids’ knitting patterns—such fun) and plenty of scratching my head trying to make up my mind.
When you can start and end a pattern anywhere you want on a sweater, where do you start it? Where do you end it? How do you work it across the raglans? Will the unicorn’s horn disappear into the underarm? With no written pattern to guide you, these questions can feel thorny. But you have to decide. You have to just go. And when you do: pure knitting joy.
My Trusty Guide: Skill Set
Looking at the melange of pattern, you may think, whoa, this is some upper division coursework, some advanced knitting.
But not really! The two skills I used the most were basic stranded colorwork and intarsia, both of which are taught in our learn-to-knit book, Skill Set: Beginning Knitting. And we’ve got supershort, clear videos for both of these techniques, freely available in the Skill Set channel on YouTube.
Really and truly, the most important prerequisite was desire: simply wanting to make this little sweater badly enough. It’s good ol’ MDK Rule No. Whatever: No project is too ambitious if you crave the result enough.
The other important requirement was a tough one for me: no do-overs. I had to let things be, even if they didn’t work out exactly as I’d wanted them to. It was simply too tangly of a project to rip anything back; if I indulge the impulse to do that, I won’t finish.
So this little sweater shows every blip and weirdness, every moment when my ability to count stitches or find the center of a motif failed me. O the humanity: that flower squashed up against the button band!
It helps to know that I’ll get another go at this. I’m learning a lot from my first attempt. It also helps to know that mother and daughter are both as knitworthy as they come. This sweater will be welcome, flaws and all, because of the affection it embodies.
I’ll tell you this: this project has been as much fun as I’ve ever had knitting—and I’ve had a ton of fun knitting.
New Technique Alert
Erin Guimond works her intarsia motifs using the ladderback jacquard technique.
I’d never heard of the ladderback jacquard technique, so I blithely ignored it and worked all of my intarsia the regular way. I have the ends and wobbly joins to show for it! The insides of Erin’s sweaters look a lot more demure than mine does. Lesson learned.
A question for knitters who love me: when were you going to clue me in about the ladderback jacquard technique? Why are we sleeping on this?
While knitting, I watched this excellent and comprehensive Ladderback Jacquard Tutorial from Starcrossed Knits. I resolve to learn this technique—which seems pretty intuitive, albeit hard to explain in words—for my next collage cardigan.
In addition to the sleeves, which will be a mix of stranded colorwork stripes (hello, Dee Hardwicke), I have a bit of finishing ahead of me, to make the mouse a 3D mouse, give the unicorn a bashful wink, and add some sprinkles to the ice cream. For curious minds, here’s a list of links to where I got the charts.
A big thank you to Erin Guimond for the blast of inspiration and joy, for generously sharing her sweaters and her process, and for cheering me on so kindly. I cannot wait to see what you make next!
Pretty sure there’s gonna be an adult-sized one of these in the world as soon as I graduate Skill Set. Soooo cute!
This is so much fun! And super inspiring as well.
The little happy face on the back is EVERYTHING
This is adorable! Wish I had seen this my granddaughters were younger. Thanks for keeping us inspired Kay!
I know right? I don’t rule out making one for my 27 year old daughter with Blue, Totoro, and Hamtaro on it.
Tug on my heart.
Ladderback jacquard works for colorwork as well as intarsia. It was perfect for the Papa sweater and the Christal Seyfarth sweater with large motifs, I am working on now. Just make sure it feels a bit on the loose side. It’s easy to pull too tight. Always fun to learn a new technique!
My mother did dozens of sweaters with personal motifs…Winnie the Pooh and all the baseball teams logos are the two that come to mind…and dinosaurs! She first drew the pattern and images on graph paper and then placed the images. It was painstaking artistry and she was brilliant at it. We cherish her personal creations. (She used the name Jane for several years, though she was Jennie)
Love love love! It’s perfection. The happy face brings it all together.
I love this. Going in my own direction with a project is something I do joyfully and often. Thank you for all the links!
O
M
Glory!
This is amazing.
And such excellent stash diving.
xo
So inspiring Kay! Painting with yarn! Thank you for sharing your collaged sweater . I love the whimsy!
Key question: do you weave in the ends? I’m assuming (hoping) that’s a no. Really gorgeous work. LOVE.
Yes I do weave them in!
I was wondering the same thing!
Both the sweater and the ladder back technique are too much of wonderful! Thank you.
Love this mixing of colorwork in a new and fresh way!
Another helpful technique is vertical stranding – check with Lorilee Beltman! It can be very useful for certain motifs like your green grid.
Wow! I want it now!!!
Kay—wow! Genius! Love this so much. Thanks for a cheery start to the day!
Really cute idea! I wouldn’t worry about an occasional squishy flower or something like that. Even when you buy kids clothes at stores like Target that cute flower is sometimes perfectly placed and sometimes half covered by a button band or pocket.
Kay, we need a t-shirt with that phrase you just coined, “stop, drop and knit.” Whimsy is the word for these marvelous designs!
I just used ladderback jacquard for the first time on a hat I designed with Plied Yarn. I had never seen a reason to try it before. Easy to do, tricky to explain. Cute sweater! Can Annabel Fox and Ralph Lauren be next…..
I just learned about the ladderback jacquard technique last month. Ysolda Teague used it in one of her Knitworthy8 patterns, the Linocut Hat. She also has a tutorial on YouTube (which I had to watch more than once or twice!). It is a good thing to learn!
So delightful, Kay! I have been wanting to try ladderback jacquard for a while now, since I am very dissatisfied with the “trap long floats every few stitches” approach in stranded colorwork. New to me that it can be used for intarsia as well!
Thanks to you and Ann for the unending inspo.
If you’re a visual learner, Susan Rainey includes a link to her YouTube videos in the pattern for a hat (https://ravel.me/its-not-about-the-hat).
What fabulous sweaters! Brings me back to when my daughter was very young. I joined a knitting group at the local yarn shop every Thursday evening. It was my night to take care of myself. One of the group members made a comment that stuck with me – “Nothing in knitting is hard” – just 2 basic stitches, knit and purl! I had challenges as I learned, for sure, but I chose to be optimistic. I decided nothing was too hard to knit! And sure enough, I made 2 wonderful sweaters, including an intarsia cardigan pattern of checkerboards and patterned hearts. Did I make mistakes? Absolutely I did! But I chose a pattern and colors that brought me joy, and my four year old loved it. Most satisfying project I’ve ever done!
Oh my goodness.
OH, I was hoping to see where you’d get with this! Erin’s sweaters are so wonderful and so is this one.
I think (though I have to watch the video sometime) that I used a poorly executed ladderback jacquard back in 1992 out of frustrated laziness — I still have the sweater. The motifs scrunch in just a bit but it’s still a great one.
Also, my comments lately have been marked for review. Am I on a watchlist? Or is there a glitch?
Sweet!! What happy knitting! I just took a class on Ladderback Jacquard from @zaneteknits (Vogue Knitting Live Virtual class). It was great. The technique is brilliant and easy to master. Go for it, Kay!
Thanks for introducing us to Erin’s work. So inspiring, as you are with your go-for-it mentality! Sweater is adorable and I’m sure the recipient will be tickled pink! Looking forward to seeing the completed version.
Pure joy, in yarn form!
What an accomplishment!
Wow! This is so inspiring Kay. Thanks for sharing your fun knit and for shining a light in Erin’s amazing work.
Plan to go down a Ladderback Jaquard rabbit hole later today.
These sweaters are SO cute. I just finished an intarsia Owl pullover for my 7 year old granddaughter. Next on the list is a Corgi colorwork hat for my daughter-in-law has very long floats, so I’ve been looking at this pattern to learn ladderback jacquard
https://www.ravelry.com/projects/jazzypenny/its-not-about-the-hat
I think I’ll check out your suggested tutorial next!
Thinking about future sweaters for the granddaughters…so many possibilities….
Intarsia is definitely easier when not in the round! I knit my granddaughter’s sweaters in pieces. So a cardigan is a good choice for the intarsia bits.
Wow, that tutorial was really interesting! The sweaters are precious!
Stunning. Absolutely love this. Another person contemplating an adult version or three…..
Oh, my goodness, Kay, what an amazing adventure! I love the cardigan, wonkyness and all! Kudos to you for jumping into this project!
My cousin, an incredibly accomplished (and absolutely fearless) knitter, made a “Hickory Hickory Dock” cardigan for my toddler daughter (now in her 30s), featuring the Big Ben style clock across the button band up the front, and the mice running around the border – all without a pattern, and with no visible weaving-in on the inside. It made me want to learn to knit – and was intimidating, all in one garment! This looks much more achievable, although still a bit daunting! Kudos, Kay!!
I would like to know how much is it altogether
If it helps you feel better, I only heard about ladderback jacquard a few weeks ago. I immediately found a video and practiced it on a colorwork sock!
It’s too rare that knitting gets me excited, but Erin’s work does the trick. I’m so excited about this! Love your take on it, too.
I’m currently visiting my granddaughters (and the parents and my daughter, of course) and wow, would they love these. How timely.
A friend has just done a wonderful tarot card motif in ladderback jacquard and it looks mahvelous.
They look like so much fun. Who couldn’t smile wearing one of those.
For members of TKGA, the Summer 24 issue of Cast On magazine has an article about ladderback jaquard.
I’ve used it several times in small items, and discovered a couple of useful things: you can easily change the colors in the ladder from one row to the next; and you can slant the path of the loop in the ladder, shifting it sideways a stitch or two per row, as you go up, to move it to the center of a new area of color.
Love it!!! Thank you for the reminder to leave in mistakes – fixing them often or more to the point stopping because of them is my biggest obstacle & why I have a UFO bin! Happy November!
I took a Ladderback Jacquard online class with the Devious Knitter (I think I have that right)… she said she’d like it to become “stranded is how we used to do color work before Ladderback”. I agree. It is SO lovely! And the cardigan–I may have to make one for ME. Whimsy is seriously needed right now!
The ladderback jacquard is a neat trick for long floats. When I need to make a long floats I always wonder if it is the right length, or if I am going to have puckering or loose stitches.
I have tried to learn ladder back jacquard several times. I am going to try again with the tutorial from Starcrossed . She covers all the details needed to use this technique in easy to understand terms (at least for me they look easy to understand), we’ll see how my swatches turn out. It seems to be finally making sense after I watched her video.
Wow, a technique I’d never heard of!! Thanks so much! Watched the video and will be definitely using this to tackle color work in the future….
Your work is lush, many years ago I may have given it a go, well done