It’s a veritable sweater-fest here at Amy Herzog Designs this week, between Rhinebeck and the CustomFit launch. Today, I’ll present one of my two Sunday Rhinebeck sweaters, both new designs.
Introducing Tucci:
I’m such a sucker for stripes. They brighten my mood, they’re cheerful, and they’re a great way for me to work colors that I love, but don’t want all over, into my wardrobe. So Tucci combines an easy-to-modify silhouette with sassy, cheerful stripes and simple (optional) embroidery for a stunner of a cardigan. It’s great for using up small amounts of that knockout yarn (or a color you want to use sparingly) and giving your sweater some interest without going overboard.
It’s constructed in pieces from the bottom up, then seamed. The collar is picked up and knit after seaming. Button bands are worked inline with the front pieces, making for easier finishing. Optional blanket stitch is used to give the seed stitch edges some colorful interest, and the stripes are placed on the collar and sleeves for visual balance and easy modification options.
Spirit Trail Fiberworks’ Brigantia is an incredible blend of Polwarth wool and silk. It’s got a lightweight feel, lovely fluidity, great drape, and a gorgeous sheen. When this utterly awesome fabric is combined with the intense, subtly-shaded colors that come out of Jen’s dye-pot, the result is intense and fabulous. I can’t recommend it enough.
I’m doing something new, for the first time, with this pattern release, and that’s releasing Tucci in two ways: One that’s standalone, and one that’s a CustomFit recipe.
Which leads me to some details that I didn’t explicitly lay out in my post on the CustomFit release yesterday:
CustomFit accounts, storing body measurements, and storing swatches, are all free. And always will be. When you’d like to knit a sweater pattern, step through the sweater design wizard, triple-check (and tweak) anything about the sweater you’d like. Then, each pattern costs US $9.99.
We think this makes tons more sense, given the amount of time it takes to make a sweater, than a huge up-front cost or a subscription model.
Keeping that in mind, Tucci may be purchased in one of two ways from from my ravelry pattern store:
Which should you choose? It depends on whether you’re typically comfortable knitting (and modifying) a pattern as written, or whether you’d really like to get instructions that fit you well with no modification required. The CustomFit recipe involves a perfect fit and no math but does require the purchase of a CustomFit pattern, for $9.99 to get a complete set of instructions.
Please let me know what you think of pattern releases with two options, this way. It’s a new idea and I’d love your feedback.
Either way, I hope you like Tucci as much as I do. I’ll be wearing its sassy, chipper stripes on Saturday morning at Rhinebeck, and I can’t wait to see you there.
Amy Herzog Designs