Ready, set, GO! It's time for a Knit-A-Long!

This time it's a Knit Red KAL! We will be knitting Diane Soucy's (of Knitting Pure & Simple) pattern from the Knit Red book, the A-Line Hoodie. We chose this pattern not only because it is one of our favorites from the book (although I think they are all favorites!) it also has the highest number of favorites on Ravelry of all the Knit Red patterns!

Diane Soucy's A-Line Hoodie

We've been receiving such positive feedback on using Diane's pattern! We are so excited that everyone loves the A-Line Hoodie as much as we do because Diane is one of the people who helped inspire Laura to start Jimmy Beans Wool; which we're sure you read about in our Hand Dyed catalog. What's even more exciting is that Diane is going to be participating in this KAL right along with us by filming some videos with me (Terry) that will take you through the steps of how to knit a top down sweater! We'll learn things like how to decide what size to make, the importance of gauge and how to find it, how to cast on and what are all those markers for? And, the big one I know you all want to know because it was a much discussed issued in our last KAL, how to pick up stitches for the underarms without holes!

The KAL will start on Monday, August 6th and run for six weeks until Monday, September 17th.

We'll be blogging each week right here on the Stitch Red blog and the JBW blog, as well as having an on-going discussion, camaraderie, and support in threads on both Ravelry groups- Jimmy Beans Wool and Stitch Red.

For our local customers, I'm willing to hold KAL Knit Nights on Tuesday evenings every other week if enough interested people respond to this blog post by Sunday, August 5th.

The A-Line Hoodie pattern can be found on page 22 of Knit Red by Laura Zander. The pattern calls for Debbie Macomber's Blossom Street Collection, Cashmere Fleur de Lys in color #416.

The Cashmere Fleur de Lys is an absolutely lovely and soft yarn and as always you are welcome to use any worsted weight yarn that you want. If you have questions on if a yarn is worsted weight check the yarn band for the suggested gauge. A suggested gauge of 18-20 stitches to 4" (4.5-5 stitches per inch) on a US 7-8 needle will work for this pattern.

My swatch - it feels wonderful knit up!

Personally, I'm going to be sticking with the Stitch Red color theme and making my sweater out of Berroco Vintage in their Stitch Red color, #5150 Berries. I'm choosing this yarn because I'm not always as gentle with my hand knits as I should be and I want this sweater to be an everyday sweater that is durable and easy to care for. In addition, I don't look my best in blue-reds so I need to stick with orange-reds or reds with a hint of black and the Berroco Vintage fits the bill for me in every way.

I would also like to suggest a few other Stitch Red colors you can consider (if you'd like to join me in supporting Stitch Red):

Encore Worsted #475
Fantasy Naturale #3611
Shepherd Worsted - Bold Red
Shepherd Worsted June '12 LLE - Stitch Red (we still have some!)
Merino 5 #1012
Bamboo Ewe #5280
Red Heart Soft Solid Color #5142

I've already made a swatch for my sweater with the Berroco Vintage on US 8 and US 9 Knitter's Pride Cubics and after washing my swatch I got gauge perfectly on US size 8.

So choose your yarn and get swatching! This is going to be so much fun!

Terry