I love designing garments. If I could knit just one thing forever, it would be garments.

I fully believe we should knit what we love.

Designing the final garment for the Celtic Knits Club every year is both a highlight and also a little terrifying. Cables are both what I love to knit and to wear, but until I share it with you, I don’t know if you’ll fall in love with it as much as I do.

So let me introduce you to my final design for the Celtic Knits Club 2024:

The Bere Sweater

Last year we discovered that our Deas yarn LOVES big chunky cables. So my focus was on larger, more dramatic cables and I have always loved ribbed cables!

Ribbing naturally creates a knit-purl grid for you to work cables. Working cables on ribbing creates an intricate interwoven lattice effect that naturally flows in and out of the ribbing. The cables form a much more organic part of the fabric, being more integrated into it.

Our theme for our Celtic Knits Club 2024 is the islands of Ireland and, for me, my thoughts went to the sea. Island life relies on the sea. All transport off the island is by boat and they rely heavily on fisherman for food throughout the year. In this sweater, the large intertwining cables remind me of ropes being knotted, twisted, and coiled together, echoing the intricate knotting used by the fishermen.

Ribbing has certain limitations as well as advantages. To keep the fabric the same on both sides with ribbing all the way around, it must be worked in multiples of 24 stitches. This allows you to have a full extra pattern repeat (6 stitches) on each end as well as on both sides of the work. This will allow each of the stitch patterns to be placed in the same position for each size.

This makes for big jumps between the garment sizes. However, ribbing makes all the difference here.

With ribbing, you have a lot of variation in how you block it. If you want to keep it a little smaller than the size in the pattern, you can block it gently so that it pulls in a lot more. To make it a little wider, you can block it slightly stretched, which will increase the size so it doesn’t grip as tightly when it’s worn. So even though there is 5” / 12.5 cm between each side, the suggested positive ease of 2-5” / 5-12.5 cm means it will still fit all sizes in that range.

Bere Sweater Construction

This sweater is knit in the round from the bottom up. Imagine this – everything outside of cables is worked in 3 by 3 ribbing and even the cables are based on ribbing. There is a single large Crosshatch cable at the centre of the front flanked by a right and left-leaning cable on each side. On the back there are 4 cables, 2 leaning to the right and 2 to the left.

Are you with me? Can you see it?

You’ll work the body straight up to the armhole where you will divide for the front and back. As you divide the side cables will end and you’ll only have the central cables. The upper body has armhole shaping, short-row shoulder shaping and a 3-needle shoulder bind-off.

Once the body is complete, the sleeves are picked up around the armholes and worked from the top down. German short rows create the sleeve caps and when the sleeve cap is complete, the top of the sleeve moves from ribbing into a mirrored cable on each sleeve.

Finally, the neck is finished using a simple I-cord edging that gives it a clean, tidy finish that fits well with the ribbed body. The ribbed fabric of this sweater makes it really comfortable to wear. It’s fitted without being too tight.

I hope you love it as much as I do!

Celtic Knits Club 2024

The Bere Sweater is just one pattern from our 2024 knitting club. You can still join us and have access to all five patterns with designs from Laura Perrem, Eimear Earley and myself, as well as all the live recordings, step-by-step tutorials and more!