It’s time for pattern 2 from my Nua Collection Volume 2; Korat.
If you look through my patterns you’ll quickly see that I’m not really a colourwork person. I love working stranded colourwork, and the dense, squishy fabric it produces but I struggle to find sleek, different colourwork ideas that feel like ‘me’. When I spotted this one I really loved it, and swatching it out made me jump with glee. It’s easy to work, but graphic and effective. I think it would be a fantastic first colourwork project as it’s such a short repeat. All of the colours from Nua play very nicely together so the challenge was just to find combinations that gave enough ‘pop’ to show the pattern off.
I settled on using a dark background colour (August Storms) and then having the three ‘pops’ of colour in Hatter’s Teal Party, Frog on the Wall and Angry Monkey. If you squint when looking at the colours you’ll see that the centre one (Frog on the Wall) is the most tonally different from the other 2 so I put it in the centre. The outer 2 are somewhere between the darkest and the lightest but the colour is a nice contrast.
I think this would work really well flipping the colours around with a light main colour and then darker ‘pops’. Perhaps Bare Necessities as the primary, Capall for the dark centre and then Angry Monkey and Rolling bales as the 2 outer colours.
Once you have your colour choices made you need to know how it’s constructed! It begins with one of my favourite edgings, a folded hem. This is worked by starting with a provisional cast-on, working the contrast colour to the fold, and then working the same length in the main colour. Now you undo the provisional cast-on and knit the cast-on with your working stitches. This gives you an easy, seamless and stretch edge that is very slick!
Once the edge is finished you will work in the round to the armholes and divide your work in 2. At the shoulder you switch to garter stitch which has the advantage of making German Short Rows for shoulder shaping very easy! Finally you join the front and back using a three-needle bind-off.
Finally you pick up the sleeves and work them from the top down. I finished them at 3/4 length but if you get extra yarn you can easily add to the length.
I’ve done a short video introduction to the sweater here (with bonus Jasper cameo role!):
This collection is available in a few different ways; print (with digital copy), digital only or as individual patterns. All purchases from my website allow you after checkout to add the pattern to your ravelry library but you can also find the digital version directly on ravelry here.