The enchanted landscape of the Sienna region of Tuscany inspired this jacket/cardigan. It's a vision of celestial sky-blue spanning an earthy blend of terracotta, the contrasting textures akin to tiled roofs overlooking rolling hills and valleys. Think of it as having one foot in heaven, one foot on earth.
Knit in thick, textury yarns, the sleeves are as full as a poet's shirt while the torso slips a simple rib stitch over your curves to flatter. A mix of tapes and ribbons in the body creates the look of hand-woven silk while the sleeves brim in a fulsome mix of textury fiber. Optional buttons line the front. Knit side to side, the pattern can easily be adapted to any size with my 'smart sizing' solutions (so simple!).
And this one is among my favorite designs to date. I love the way it flatters any shape (and I've had three very different bodies take it for a spin), the way it makes me feel both modern yet connected to the past, much like the country that inspired the design.
Blue Skies over the city of Sienna's famous Campo
Forage for blues and browns with touches of green if you want to recreate a similar color effect. My blue leans toward teal but any blue with any collection of warm browns will work. Of course, the pattern provides an absolute blank canvas for your own color explorations. How about a feast of pastels as pale as a wash of pigment across a Roman mosaic or of some dramatic black and silver concoction?
As with all my free-range patterns, knit with almost any yarn. The slim lines are created by knitting rows of a thin yarn (rayon metallic) amid bands of thicker, textured, fibers in random rib knit side to side on size 5.5mm needles. Sound complicated? It isn't. Side to side rib knitting is pure liberation, an answer to sizing nightmares and a way to multicolor a rib without Fair Isle's extra weight.
For the body's lean alternating right side rib 'valleys', I used Blue Heron Rayon Metallic. This thin, slightly gleaming, yarn creates a smooth, stable foil for the exuberant ribbing 'hills' which I worked in a mixture of everything from Blue Heron's Cotton Rayon tape, Colinette's Giotto (another favorite of mine), other ribbons and tapes, cotton knit doubled and silk yarns -- anything I had on hand in the desired colors, in fact.
For the sleeves, I let myself go. Here, in a lux expanse of thicker yarns knit on size 8mm needles, free-range rules. I used tapes, ribbons, mohair, grassy-texture yarns mixed with thinner fibers -- anything I had on hand, including strips of fabric (information on how to make strippons are included in the pattern). The contrast between the sleeves and the jacket's body creates another texture study that's fun to make and beautiful to behold.
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