Now I’m digging out old sweaters that I’ve never blogged about. 🙂 Today I’m posting about my Scandinavian Family cardigan from Knitting the New Classics by Kristin Nicholas. (The title and the book cover are linked to the Ravelry page since this book is out of print. It was published in 1995.)
The Scandinavian Family sweater is stranded knitting, with contrast bands at the shoulders and hems. It’s a drop shoulder boxy design (more square pieces!) and I had some fun mixing up the colours.
One of the interesting changes in patterns is that many companies (like Rowan and Elite) once offered many size variations in each design, so you could make the same sweater pattern for every member of the family. (Rowan also used to offer sleeve and length variations.) Here’s the photo spread for this sweater from the book:
The picture is dark so it didn’t photograph that well, but they’re all wearing a version of the same sweater.
And here’s my version:
I split mine up the front to make a cardigan, which meant I added facings all around. I started with the mixy gold blend in the borders, which had been in my grandmother’s yarn stash, and chose colours to coordinate with it. I have no idea what the content of it is – it was a huge handwound ball when I got it. The green and white yarns used in the main body are from a farm/mill that used to be near Ottawa called Belle Vallée Wools. (They might still exist. I’m not sure.) I bought the green and white in Carleton Place on a road trip to Ottawa in the mid-90s. The yarn is a lot like Briggs & Little Regal. Many of the colours in the yoke are actually fingering weight and I held them double. Again, I bought yarns all over the place, but mostly on that road trip.
A detail pic. I love this fair isle pattern and all the colours in the green tweedy wool:
This is a really warm sweater, probably because it’s knit tightly. No worries about the wind with this one! The other thing about this kind of wool is that it doesn’t change much over time. It doesn’t pill or show wear the way that softer yarns do. This sweatter looks very similar to the day it came off the needles, thirty years ago, and not because I haven’t worn it.
Here’s my Ravelry project page. I called this one my Snowflake Sweater.
Alive & Knitting 
I have that book. I made the vest on page 19, twice. Once in a beautiful black speckled mohair (Not Le Gran. Some other yarn), and a second in a pretty pink & cream merino blend. I had fully intended on making a few more sweaters from that book, but life got in the way. That was the era of big and boxy. Starmore started out boxy, too. Now she’s all about fitted, which is fine, but super-fitted doesn’t appeal to me at age 66 like it did at 36. Also, I just don’t “dress up” very much anymore. You did an amazing job with this pattern. That had to be a LOT of work!
How funny that you have this book too! I remember casting on a lot of other projects from this book, but Classic Elite yarn was hard to find in Canada and many of their blends were tough to substitute. I learned a lot about gauge in starting those projects and frogging them.
I’d forgotten that I made that vest, too, for my SIL in a mohairy blend from King Cole. It was all mixy blues and greys. Really pretty and she loved it.
I’ll have to go look at Starmore’s more recent patterns because I don’t know what she’s been up to…