Matilda said, “Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable…”
― Roald Dahl, Matilda
okay, we admit it. sometimes we construct our knitting projects by taking a “design by numbers” approach. with an infinite number of things that one could create with yarn, sometimes we really do need to set-up some constraints. the check-list for matilda looked something like this:
- textured
- no cable needle
- knit top-down
- yoke collar, knit side-ways
- a cardigan
- color block
- knit with clever camel
we then scribbled a quick sketch and came up with the illustration below: (let us caveat that sketching isn’t exactly our strong suit…)
did we meet all the requirements on our self-imposed check-list? why yes! yes we did!
a few design notes: the yoke collar of matilda is sideways knit with a combination of twisted stitches and ribbing. the torso of the cardigan combined ribbing on the side (for a degree of give), the cocoon stitch, and a fancy twisted stitch pattern.
now a really interesting, unexpected sort of thing happened when miss e (above) modeled matilda for us … she gave it a whole new, off-the shoulder look. miss e has a size 32-33″ bust. the sample she slipped on, was meant for someone with a size 36″ bust. it was like a whole new sweater! we loved it! (so there you go girls…it’s not about the size on the back of tag, it’s about how you wear it.) we give instructions on how to achieve a classic versus “off the shoulder” look in the sizing section of the online product description.
here’s a view of matilda worn as what we’re calling a “classic fit”:
and ‘lest we forget to mention, the matilda pattern is free with the purchase of Clever Camel yarn required to make this project. just write “matilda” in the comments box and we’ll send you a hardcopy of the pattern. there’s no need to add the pattern into your cart to receive the offer.