Interweave has had so many incredible pullover sweater patterns over the years. We decided to gather the bestsellers of 2010 into one, convenient PDF download:
Best
of 2010—Top
Ten Patterns for Knitted Pullovers!
I was looking through the top ten and I discovered one that I hadn't seen before, Notre Dame de Grace by Véronik
Avery. How could I have missed it?!? I just love the casual style of this pullover; it's the perfect weekend sweater, great with jeans or cords. And it's a good layering piece, too.
What first caught my eye about this sweater was the collar-shoulder-button combo. At first I thought that the sweater had saddle shoulders, which I've never knit before. When I looked closer, however, I saw that the stitch pattern changed at the shoulders, sort of mimicking a saddle shoulder. The collar is a really nice combo of the shoulder rib pattern and some short-row work, which is what gives it it's stand-up shape.
When I started looking at this sweater, I thought the main pattern stitch was moss stitch, but it turns out it's double seed stitch. This got me thinking about seed stitch and its many "offspring" (or should I say "cousins"?).
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The original seed stitch, which I found labeled "dot stitch." |
I started Googling seed stitch, and I came up with pretty much what I expected, that here in the U.S. what we call "seed stitch" Europeans call "moss stitch." Véronik
Avery lives in Montreal, so I think Canadians subscribe to the same seed stitch conventions as the Europeans do. (I think seed stitch is kind of like the metric system!)
Once I opened this Pandora's box, I really fell into it! I started looking up seed stitch/moss stitch in all of my stitch dictionaries, and what I found really muddied the waters.
I learned that the original English version of seed stitch is a sort of decorative use of purls to dot a background of stockinette stitch; sort of a scattering of "seeds." US moss stitch is usually called "double moss stitch" across the pond and in Canada. And I found Véronik's double moss stitch under the name of "box stitch."
See what I mean? Muddy. To unmuddy just a bit, I knit up a swatch and labeled it with the names most commonly used for the seed and moss stitch family in the US.
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All in the family: Double seed stitch, moss stitch, and seed stitch
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It's so fun to do this sort of research! I came across tons of beautiful stitch patterns, too. Try it, I think you'll have a fun evening!
And get our 2010 best-selling pullovers—Best
of
2010: Top
Ten Patterns for Knitted Pullovers—you'll find a favorite to wear in 2011!
Cheers,
