I cast on the So Faded sweater pretty much as soon as I bought the pattern in May 2017. I fell in love with the So Faded sweater designed by Andrea Mowry as soon as I laid eyes on it.
Fading is the now commonly used term for gradient, blended, ombré, phased or coming from an art background as I did, colour wash as a way of blending different coloured yarns together in a pleasing way. As someone, who has a large collection of single hanks of sock yarn, this technique really appeals to me.
“When you’re planning fades, the main thing to remember is that you want to have a family of yarns/colors that can work together in harmony.”
Jesie Ostermiller, The Colorwork Bible
This was the first time that I had used faded ombré in my knitting although, I have used watercolour colour washes when painting and colour wash techniques in my patchwork. The first thing I realised was that to be truly successful, it is necessary to have a sizable collection of hand-dyed yarns to draw upon. In some ways, I would have had a more successful sweater if I had waited and spent more time collecting the yarns that I would use to create my So Faded.
I’m not going to name all of the 6 yarns that I used as they were all hand-dyed by me a long time ago, apart from the Malabrigo Candombe 870. As the Malabrigo Sock Yarn is a hand-dyed product, the same colourway can be substantially different between different batches. Mine had virtually no yellow in it.
I faded the colours from a lighter grey tonal at the yoke to the darkest inky tones of the Malabrigo yarn at the hem.
When I swatched for the So Faded sweater, I knew I wasn’t completely happy with my choice of the 3rd colour, but, it was what I had at that moment, so I just went with it. I’ve always rather regretted that decision but the sweater looks nice on, though a darker tone would have been more flattering across the midriff.
The sock yarns I used are all superwash, so the sweater has grown in length a little over the years, which I knew would happen and this means my So Faded sweater looks great with leggings and ankle boots/knitted socks and I often wear it.
I love that I can just pop the sweater into the wool wash with my hand knit socks rather than needing to hand wash it.
I wear my So Faded often and over the past 4 years, it has worn well with absolutely no pilling. It looks like it was blocked and worn for the first time.
I chose to knit the largest size as I changed to a 3.5 mm needle for the stockinette as I preferred the fabric I obtained using this needle size to the looser fabric using the 3.75 mm needles. I used a 3 mm needle for the 2×2 rib at collar, cuffs and hemline. I prefer my sweaters to be loose-fitting rather than fitted.
When I was knitting the raglan shaping on the yoke I changed it slightly. I used M1R/L on the stockinette side of the raglan and Kfb on the garter stitch side of the raglan. I loved how these blended into the garter stitch. I chose to knit long sleeves and a longer length. In total I used 452g of sock yarn, the least amount of yarn used was for Colour 1 and Colour 6. To give you an idea of how much yarn I needed to knit my So Faded, I used 67g of Colour 1, 87g of Colour 2, 88g of Colour 3, 80g of Colour 4, 75g of Colour 5 and 55g of Colour 6.
My sweater was finished in time to wear to the Yarnfolk Festival of Wool in Whitehead in August 2017. I’d finished knitting and blocked it in July, so it was a reasonably quick project to do.
In the afternoon after visiting the yarn festival, we all went for a walk to the Blackhead Lighthouse, or at least, Neil and our niece Mya walked to the Lighthouse whilst, I stayed on the path by the shore and relaxed on a bench and enjoyed watching the ships passing on Belfast Lough. I also had a lovely view of the Blackhead Lighthouse on top of the cliff!
It is a wonderful walk with sculptures every so often and a rocky beach. When my brother, sister and I were children we adored a rocky beach. The hours would slip by, while my mum read a book, and we searched rock pools for hermit crabs and starfish.
I haven’t knit a second So Faded yet. I definitely will at some point in the future, but at the moment, I’m knitting a Flax Light sweater for Neil and a Felix pullover for myself.
Hi from Michigan,, USA. The sweater is so gorgeous! One day I hope to improve my knitting skills to tackle a project like this! I am self taught after a knitting teacher told me I was “hopeless”. I found a child’s kit on clearance in a bookstore and taught myself. I finally just taught myself how to knit in the round. So one day soon. Thank you for the inspiration.
Congratulations Marianne on learning to knit! There is no right or wrong way to knit, just what feels comfortable to you. The joy of knitting a sweater from the top-down is that there is virtually no finishing other than sewing in the yarn tails. If you can cast on, increase, knit and purl, you can knit a sweater. The important thing is to knit a swatch and keep knitting swatches until you have the gauge required for the pattern. It means you will have a sweater that fits when you are finished. Also, once you’ve knit the yoke and separated for the body and sleeves, knit a couple of inches of the body and then divide onto two circular needles and try your sweater on. You’ll immediately be able to see if you are happy with the fit of the yoke before you spend many hours knitting the body and sleeves. I think it is also helpful, to knit a sweater that lots of people have knit, especially for the first sweater, as you can be certain that the pattern will be easier to follow. I put off knitting my first sweater for far too long, because, I was afraid of the cost involved. That was why the So Faded Sweater really appealed to me. As an avid sock knitter, I have a large collection of single skeins of sock yarn collected over time, and it was great fun, choosing the colours that I thought would work well together without actually having to go out and buy yarn. Sometimes, it is great fun shopping from your own sock yarn collection. Just go for it, if it is going wrong, frog it and start again! Happy Sweater Knitting, Nicolette