The Pink Pullover

The Pink Pullover

I’m off to Stitches West tomorrow morning, but before I’m away from my base of operations for a week I wanted to share my newest piece, “The Pink Pullover.” I know exactly what you’re thinking; “That coat is chartreuse.” Okay, perhaps you thought green, never-the-less, this piece was given it’s name because of it’s inspiration.

A “pink”, is eighteenth century slang for a traditional red hunting coat. It’s derived from the name of eighteen century London’s most popular field-wear tailor, Thomas Pink. When I first set out to make this sweater I was intending to make a fairly close rendition of a traditional hunting coat with added texture. That being said, free form knitting took the best of me and this piece began to design itself.

Back view of cables and textured yoke.

The yarns are two recently discontinued colours of JoSharp Silkroad Aran, which showed the stitches and cables exactly as I wanted them. I couldn’t be more pleased with the yoke, which simply happened by accident. The layout of the cables were done free form as I knitted and are loosely based on a cardigan by Melissa Morgan-Oakes called, “The Radiance Cabled Jacket.” I liked the way the cables down the back of that cardigan flattered the figure by making an hourglass shape. I tried to do the same in this design by making the distance of the cables across the back like that most desired female shape: heavier at the top, cinching in, and almost as wide again at the bottom.

Crocheted front with key-hole neckline.

It took me quite a while to figure out what to do with this neckline. I knew that I had wanted to add in the slate blue here; It was the sight of these two colours together in the warehouse that initially inspired me to dream up this coat, but I had no idea where to add it in. So I cracked open my copy of Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top Down and found an image of a key-hole neckline. I chose crochet because of it’s three dimensional nature, which I thought would make it easier to sculpt the neckline. In fact, I crocheted the neckline on the garment while it was still on my dressmaker’s dummy. It was quite the sight. Me, crochet hook in hand, straddling a dress form and crocheting madly into the night. The drops on the right breast are also crocheted on, again for the three dimensional quality. I didn’t want them to be simply on top of the knitting, but rather above it to juxtapose the inward (purled) cables on the back of the garment.

Cuffs

And in a final homage to it’s inspiration I added a welted (lord I love welting) and split cuff with tiny silver bird buttons.