A Knitted Coat for Tyler

Posted on July 29, 2025 by Deborah Cooke

You might remember the knitted coat and hat I made for Barbie, using patterns from Sticka till Barbie. The pattern was #101 Yellow Coat along with the coordinating hat. That post is right here.

I decided to resize the pattern for my 16″ girls, and I think it came out pretty well. I used Koigu KPM and it took almost the entire 50g skein for the coat. Fortunately, I had another skein to make a matching hat.

This is Mosaic Modern Sydney Chase doing the honours today. I wish I had an umbrella to add to this combo. It has a bit of a retro look, and not just because of the shoes. (They are from a shoe pack, which included the pink slingbacks that Tyler is wearing in the picture below this one.)

Knit coat for Tyler Wentworth, knit from Koigu KPM by Deborah Cooke

The Koigu KPM has a kettle-dyed look, which worked out really well for this one. I was afraid a variegated or space-dyed yarn might pool – also Sydney says she can wear it with more things.

If I knit a second one, I might add pockets to the front. I thought of that this time, but wasn’t entirely certain what row they should be on. I’ll mark this one, just at her hand, then count the rows up from the front to know for next time.

I would make them like the pockets in this cardigan – it’s hard to see the line of cast off stitches in each front but have a look. The pocket hangs inside, like a welt pocket without much of a welt. I can just slide the tip of my finger into it.

Cabled cardigan knit by Deborah Cooke for Tyler Wentworth

I also made Sydney a blouse and skirt to wear with this knitted coat. She looks like a librarian to me in this combo, thus the glasses and book.

Top and skirt sewn for Tyler Wentworth by Deborah Cooke

This is the blouse from McCalls 3701 (the same pattern used for the pink one above) which is actually a bodysuit. It’s made of Liberty Tana Lawn. Quite a clever little design, even if the collar is fussy fussy.

Fashion Doll Clothing by Rosemarie Ionker

The skirt is drawn from the basic skirt sloper in Rosemarie Ionker’s Fashion Doll Clothing. It’s made of Kaffe Fassett shot cotton and lined with Bemberg rayon.

And two more girls are on their way to me, NRFB and from an estate sale. I’ll show them to you when they arrive. 🙂

The Koigu Tent Sale 2022

Posted on August 24, 2022 by Deborah Cooke

We took a little road trip last week and went to the tent sale at the Koigu farm. This annual event has been on hiatus thanks to the pandemic, and I was really excited that it happened this year again. Here’s an old picture of the Koigu barn, taken the first year we went to the tent sale:

Of course, I bought some (more) KPPPM home. 🙂 I have such a hard time choosing from the array of colours at this sale, but here’s this year’s selection:

The top seven are all the same colour and dye lot. They’re a little less blue than they look here, more pinky-lavender. I’ve already balled one up and cast on a Tegna. I’ll show you that when I’ve made more progress than just casting on.

The blue at the bottom left is insurance yarn for my Halo jacket. (That’s the Ravelry link for the pattern. Here’s my previous post about mine.) I think I’m going to run out of the KPPPM blue before I get to the cuffs. (Yes, I’m knitting faster, just in case.) That’s not a huge surprise as I’m a bit short on the yarn requirements.

This jacket has an interesting construction – it’s knit sideways, starting at one side. You knit across the back and around to the centre front, then go back to the cast-on edge and knit to the other front. Then you pick up the stitches from the shoulder to knit down each sleeve to the cuff. I love the feel of the KPPPM knit with Rowan Kidsilk Haze – it’s a wonderfully squishy soft sweater. When I started the sleeves, I had two skeins of KPPPM left, so one for each sleeve, then (maybe) some of this other blue at the cuff.

Here’s my progress on Halo so far:

Halo knit in Koigu KPPPM and Rowan Kidsilk Hazze by Deborah Cooke

The other four skeins that I bought at the tent sale are just pretty. They’re more earth-toned than they look here, russet and brown with some green. Three are the same colourway and I chose the dark one because it coordinated. I think they’ll be a shawl, probably another Charlotte’s Web. The one I made for Nikoo used four skeins and it was a nice size, even without the fringe.

I hope they have the tent sale again next year. By then, I might have more of my Koigu stash knit up.

Update on Navelli

Posted on February 19, 2020 by Deborah Cooke

I feel as if I’ve knit this sweater three or four times, all due to knitter error, but it’s finally coming off the needles. Navelli is a short sleeved boxy pullover. I started knitting it last summer. There are two blog posts about it already: Navelli, Nightshift and Audrey, and Navelli in Koigu. I had initially started with a handpaint for the body of the sweater, which pooled in a way I didn’t like. I switched out to a more tonal handpaint, which I liked better. Then I messed up my row counts a couple of times, did a lot of frogging and reknitting, and now, the body is off the needles. Here it is! Navelli in Koigu KPPPM and Shibui Knits Sock knit by Deborah Cooke It’s very boxy and short. I’m surprised by how much I like the look of it on, since I’m a bit boxy and short! In a way, I want it longer, but I think it’s most flattering if that fair isle band is at the waist. The neckline is softer than I’d feared it would be – boat necks sometimes can be too tight, but this one is perfect. I’m not in love with the blue in the fair isle band, but I’ve made my peace with it.

It still needs sleeves – the pattern has short cuffed ones with ribbed edging. I think I’ll make mine shorter, since there’s already a lot of drape there, and will do the ribbing in the same purple as the hem. That’s the Shibui Knits Sock.

I do love the colours of the Koigu in the body. Here’s a close-up that shows the colours well if a bit darker than IRL: Koigu KPPM I’m starting to feel as if this one will be done in time for spring!

Navelli in Koigu

Posted on October 4, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

I’ve been knitting a sweater, too, and even though it’s not done, I wanted to show it to you. The pattern is called Navelli (that’s a Ravelry link) and it’s designed by Caitlin Hunter. I’ve never knit a cropped wide sweater before (or worn one) but I really like this design. I’ve also been admiring sweaters lately that use a variegated or gradient dyed yarn along with solids in fair isle work. When I found several skeins of a really pretty colourway at the Koigu tent sale, I wanted to work with that.

The colourway that started me off is P528, a mix of teal and pink and blues, even with a bit of purple.

I found one contrast colour at Koigu: a teal in KPM, 5513. It looks kettle dyed, in that there’s variation in the tone, but not additional colours. There was only one skein so it had to take the place of the light pink in the original pattern.

When I got home and checked the stash, I discovered that I had three skeins of Shibui Knits Sock in purple. It was a perfect match, so that became my “brown”. The variegated colourway is my main colour for the body of the sweater. (This yarn is discontinued. I’d bought it originally to knit these opera gloves from Vogue Knitting Winter 2008/2009. Since then, I’ve realized that I’m unlikely to ever wear long knitted gloves, so the yarn has aged in the stash. It’s good to see it being put to work.)

Here is my Navelli before I split for the underarms:

The variegated yarn is a bit more emphatic than I’d expected. The tips of the fair isle in the purple kind of disappear into the pattern of the yarn, but what really surprised me was the pooling—and the big swirl. It looks a bit like the way hard candy swirls – like this image to the right. (That’s a stock image with its watermark intact.) The left lollipop really looks like this sweater to me!

The strange thing is that I am knitting from alternate skeins (two rows from one, then two rows from the other) which should (theoretically) break up any pooling. This yarn, though, is determined to pool. I wondered what would happen when I split the sweater for the underarms – with half as many stitches being worked, I thought maybe the swirl would break up. It did, but it’s worse:

It’s actually making vertical blobs now. Ugh. That decided it. The patterning in the yarn is distracting from the fair isle – and I think it’s ugly. I’m going to frog back to the fair isle and reknit the stockinette with the colour that’s in the skeins at the top. It’s closer to a semi-solid than a variegated yarn, so should pattern like my Koigu Lunenberg. There’s purple in this colourway, too, but the blue in the fair isle might end up looking a bit off. I think it’s in there, but it’s not the dominant blue. This gives me a chance to make another measure of my gauge – it looks like I might need to stay on the smaller needles for the plain stockinette as well as the fair isle.

R-r-r-r-r-r-r-rip it! I’m sad to do this, especially as I bought this variegated colourway specifically for this sweater, but that’s the way it goes.

Here’s my project page on Ravelry.

Navelli, Nightshift and Audrey

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

I didn’t post about my knitting last week, because I didn’t have anything finished to show you. I’m knitting along on some projects that are taking a while. So, let’s have a progress report today.

You might remember that I was going to frog the stockinette of my Navelli because I didn’t like the way the variegated colourway was pooling. Well, I have a sweater-quantity of a semi-solid Koigu in my stash, and since it’s a generous sweater quantity, I borrowed four skeins from that to use for my Navelli. This colour is working out much better – here it is:

The trick is that now I don’t love the blue in the fair isle section. It matched perfectly with the variegated colourway and is okay with this one. I’m not frogging back again. Que sera sera.

I’ve also been knitting away on my Nightshift shawl in Koigu KPPPM. I showed you the beginning of it here. My plan is to include the red – leftover from my Lunenberg cardigan – as one colour in each stripe. Here’s where I am now:

At this point, I’ve started the sixth repeat of the 20-row pattern sequence. (I’m calling a 20-row repeat a stripe.) The first one has a red background and the lightest purple as contrast. The second repeat has the lightest purple as the background and the red as the contrast colour. The third repeat has the darkest purple as the background and the red as the contrast. The fourth repeat has the middle purple as background with the red as the contrast. The fifth repeat has the red in the background again, and the first purple as the contrast. The sixth repeat (which I’ve just started) has the red in the background and the darkest purple as contrast. It is interesting how the purples, which look so different from each other, are difficult to distinguish from each other once they’re knitted up with the red.

I like this pattern a lot. It’s clever (it has i-cord binding on both edges that is knitted as you go_ and the pattern is easy to memorize. It’s a great way to use up different colourways in the same yarn, which means I’ll probably knit another one (or two).

I’ve also started to spend some time on my Audrey cardigan, which has been waiting on its sleeves for a while. Not only is it a cable pattern, but the dark purple means I need to knit it in daylight to see what the heck I’m doing. I have to have an hour in the afternoon of a sunny day, which doesn’t happen that often. The yarn is fuzzy and sheds – I keep it wrapped in a teatowel, which I spread on my lap when I’m working on it – and it makes my nose tickle a little. (It’s an angora blend, called Rowan Angora Haze. It’s also discontinued.) Here are the sleeves so far:

This yarn is so fuzzy that the camera didn’t know where to focus! The stitch pattern was reasonably easy to memorize but it’s not TV knitting. I put it aside because I thought the sleeves were too wide. I still think they are, even though I’m knitting a smaller size of sleeve. I’ll make them bracelet length and hope that does the trick.

I never showed you the body finished and assembled. Here it is, although I’m not convinced about the buttons yet. They’re a bit sparkly for me – that one is still on the button card.

I think my next project needs to be with thicker yarn!

I also went to the Woodstock Fleece Festival last weekend with a friend, which was a nice yarny fix. It was a beautiful fall day and there were so many vendors with wonderful yarn and fleece. Temptation was everywhere! In the end, I only bought two skeins of yarn – some sock yarn from an indie dyer and a skein of Spin Cycle Yarns Dream State, which I’ve been wanting to squish for a while. It’s actually the specified yarn for Nightshift. I’ll use this skein as the contrast colour on the yoke of a sweater I’m planning – the pattern is Fern & Feather (that’s a Ravelry link) and that ball of purple on the right will be the background colour.

Phew! Lots of purple on my needles. What have you been knitting lately?

Nightshift in Koigu KPPPM

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

Nightshift is a shawl pattern by Andrea Mowry, designed to be knit with six colours of a gradient yarn. Two colourways are used at any time, resulting in bands of colour with dots and dashes in the contrasting colour. It’s a striking piece, and quite substantial since the yarn is worsted weight. I cast on with worsted weight yarn but felt that the result was too thick for me to actually wear. I dove into the stash and came up with an alternative – Koigu KPPPM.

Here are my colours: Nightshift shawl by Andrea Mowry knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

This photo was taken in bright sunlight. The colours are a little deeper than they appear here, and a little less pinky. The red is the leftover from my Koigu Lunenberg cardigan – there are almost four balls (just over 600 yards) of 329P left. This will use it up. (This is one colourway I bought the first year I went to the Koigu tent sale in 2016: the second was the grey mix I’m using in my Juicy Gloss cardigan. If I ever knit the sleeves on that, there probably won’t be much of that colour left.)

Charlotte's Web Shawl by Maie Landra knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke For my contrast for the Nightshift shawl, I chose four purple colourways. In 2017 at the Koigu tent sale, I bought a pack of ten different shades of purple. I knit Charlotte’s Web with five of them – there it is, in progress above, but still have the other five. You can see all of the colours in this photo: two are already knit up in the shawl, with the three balls that I planned to use (and did) lined up on the right. The five skeins below are the ones I have left now. One of them – the far right one – doesn’t go as well with the others, to my thinking, especially when combined with the red. I chose the other four to use with the red for my Nightshift.

This (inevitably) reminds me of the Jenny Joseph poem:
“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple,
with a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.”

I’ve never understood why anyone had to wait to wear red and purple together.

This stash-dive gives me (4 x 160) 640 yards of purples and about 610 yards of red. I’ll knit until it’s gone. The pattern calls for 6 skeins that are 150 yards each, so I have more yardage. This yarn is thinner, though, so I’m hoping the shawl still comes out a good size.

Because Koigu KPPPM is fingering weight, not worsted, as specified in the pattern, I also cast on with smaller needles than specified in the pattern. I’m using 3.75mm. It’s a bit loose, which gives the yarn room to bloom, but I could have used 3.5mm.

Also, the red will appear in every band of colour in my shawl, although it will switch from being the main colour to being the contrast.

Here’s a close-up of my progress so far. Nightshift shawl by Andrea Mowry knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

The first repeat had a red background and contrast in the lightest purple. The second repeat was inverted – lightest purple background with red contrast. The third repeat, which is almost half done in this picture, has the darkest purple as background and the red as the contrast colour. My project page on Ravelry for this shawl is right here.

How do you like the beginning of my red and purple Nightshift?

The Red Koigu Cardigan Completed

Posted on August 16, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

I finished my red Lunenberg cardigan (that’s a Ravelry link) and I just love it. This is a basic cardigan but using the Koigu KPPPM really made it spectacular.

Once again, the colour isn’t true in the pictures. It’s a cherry red, but seems to photograph pink.

I was really pleased that the colours didn’t pool at all. The sleeve caps ended up looking a bit lighter than everything else, but it was just the way the colour worked out.

I showed this sweater to you earlier, without the sleeves, in this post.

I changed out the ribbing for garter stitch, because I really like how KPPPM looks in garter stitch. I used just over 8 skeins of KPPPM, so there could be another of these in my future. Here’s the link to my project page on Ravelry.

What do you think?

Progress on the Red Cardigan

Posted on July 12, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

I haven’t had any knitting to show you for a while, because I’ve been knitting away on a couple of big projects. I’ve almost finished the Wingspan shawl – I’ve knit the wing tips and cast off half of the shawl width. I have to do the other side, then block it, so I should have that to show you soon.

Here’s a progress report on my red cardigan in Koigu KPPPM. I’m working on the collar right now – you can see my needle in the stitches – then have just the sleeves to knit.

Once again, the colour looks a lot more pink in this image than it actually is. The yarn is a wonderful rich red and not very pink at all. (I talked about that in my last post about this project.) It actually matches the currant jelly I made this week. 🙂

The pattern is the Lunenberg cardigan – here’s a Ravelry link. The pattern is included in By Hand Serial #9 – you can see more about that publication on their website, here.

I’ve made some changes. Instead of ribbing on the hem, button bands and collar, I’m using garter stitch – mostly because I love how garter stitch shows off the colours of Koigu. I made a mistake in my calculations for the button band – there are supposed to be 8 buttons on the button band and one in the collar, but the way I figured it out, there are 9, plus the one in the collar. I’m not going to rip it back because I have another card of these buttons. Here’s my project page on Ravelry.

I am loving the softness and the colours of this yarn – which means, yes, we’ll be making another trip to the Koigu tent sale this August.

What do you think?

Red Koigu KPPPM Cardigan

Posted on June 7, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

It’s Fibre Friday again, and time to peek in on my knitting projects. Progress on my Wingspan shawl came to shuddering halt this week, when I realized I would run out of yarn. You might remember that I went up a needle size and wondered if I’d run out. Well, I will. So, I stopped knitting and ordered another skein of the same yarn – it’s Briar Rose Fibers Sea Pearl. The yarn is 50% merino and 50% tencel, and has a lovely sheen. I didn’t think that mixing in another yarn even for the border would look right.

The colour and dye lot aren’t marked on mine and it’s been aging in the stash for so long that there’s no way the colour would match anyway. I had a look at their website and think mine might be colour 1841. (It’s also possible that it’s a colour they don’t dye anymore.) I ordered a skein of 1901 (it’s on the second page of colour samples) which is a grey. It looks quite similar to mine but without the pink, which should make the hem look a bit darker. And the grey is probably the same dye.

While that project is on hold, I wanted to knit something other than socks. I had another poke through my needle stash and found a pair of 3.5mm circulars. Yay! They’re only 60 cm long, but that’s plenty for a cardigan knit in pieces. You know what happened next – I cast on the Lunenberg Cardigan in my red Koigu.

Here’s what it looks like so far:

It’s interesting how pink this shot looks on my computer. The yarn is actually a gorgeous variegated cherry red and I just love it.

The colour number is 329. I had a look at the colours on Koigu’s site, and it looks even more vividly pink there. It looks more like #859 on this page.

This cardigan is knit top down but in pieces – this is the back from the shoulders down. I have a few more inches to go before doing the ribbing (which will give me time to decide whether to knit ribbing or another edge) but I’m very happy with how it’s coming out.

What do you think?

My Juicy Gloss Cardigan… in Progress

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Deborah Cooke

A while back, I showed you the cardigan I was knitting from Koigu KPPPM, using the pattern called Juicy Gloss. (That’s a Ravelry link.)

I’ve finally finished knitting the body of this one and have it off the needles so I can show it to you again.

Here’s the older post. It shows the colour of the yarn better than these new pix do – here, it looks a lot more mauve than it is. And here’s the front:

This is a looooooong sweater. A big part of that is because of the changes I made to the front at the top. If you look at the pix for the pattern, you can see that the fronts are much shorter in the original design. I didn’t think this was as flattering as I wanted it to be, so added rows of stockinette to the front at the top as I was doing the raglan increases. In the original design, there isn’t any stockinette on the fronts: the lace starts at the raglan line. I like this better.

Here’s the back of the cardigan. It’s hard to see in the variegated yarn, but there’s a garter stitch ridge at the waist, then there are increases to flare the lower half of the sweater. In an ideal universe, that garter ridge should be just above the waist, I think. Because of my increases to the front, mine is about an inch below my waist. This is less flattering than would be ideal, but I’m not going to rip it back.

I’m quite impressed that the yarn didn’t pool at all. It’s beautifully soft, so soft that I know I could wear it next to my skin.

I haven’t knitted the sleeves yet: you can see that I’ve put my sleeve stitches on circular needles already.

Here’s a picture from the side. You can see that swooping angle of the waistline, which is a very pretty feature. If I knit this again with the same modifications to the front (ha), I’d make the back waist swoop across closer to the point where the lace ends at the sides. There are short rows shaping the back, and I’d knit a lot fewer of them. That would bring up the waist.

And now, on to the sleeves! I feel as if I’ve been knitting this sweater forever, but progress should be quicker now.

I really like the I-cord edging on this cardigan. It’s on the fronts, worked as you go, and the hem is bound off with I-cord. That makes a lovely neat finish all around.

One thing that puzzles me about this pattern is the name of it. I read the pattern notes again and wonder if it’s a reference to the yarn used in the sample photographed for the pattern – it’s a beautiful red, which she calls “juicy”, maybe because the color is reminiscent of ripe cherries. (?)

What do you think of the sweater so far?

Alive & Knitting

Knitting and other tangled webs we weave

Tag Archives: koigu

A Knitted Coat for Tyler

The Koigu Tent Sale 2022

Update on Navelli

Navelli in Koigu

Navelli, Nightshift and Audrey

Nightshift in Koigu KPPPM

The Red Koigu Cardigan Completed

Progress on the Red Cardigan

Red Koigu KPPPM Cardigan

My Juicy Gloss Cardigan… in Progress