It’s sweater season! … at least for a day. Oh fall, you fickle thing.

I wanted to share the details on two sweaters that I’m excited to start rotating into my wardrobe this season.

Bohus Cowl

First up is the Bohus-inspired cowl neck sweater. It’s from an issue of Vogue Knitting, but lucky for you, the pattern is now available as a free download from their site!

If you don’t know much about Bohus sweaters, it’s worth going down that rabbit hole and learning about these beautiful designs.

This is one of those times when I had an idea about a project (in this case a Bohus sweater), saw a pattern for exactly what I wanted, and bought the materials on the spot. I loved the magazine’s version so much, that I even bought the exact yarn called for in the pattern; something that I rarely do. The yarn is a bit scratchy, but I just pair it with a good base layer.

The one change I made to the original pattern was the neck. As often happens, the photos in the magazine were slightly deceiving when it came to the neck. The pattern was obviously designed to be a turtleneck (it’s even in the name!), but I was hoping for more of a loser cowl, so that’s what I did.

The large cowl was accomplished by picking up the 120 stitches called for in the pattern (rather than knitting the neck separately and then sewing it onto the sweater) with a size US6 needle. I then knit one round adding 40 more stitches evening around the neck. Finally, I switched to a US8 needle and knit the k2 p2 neck for just over 8” inches (until the yarn ran out on my skein!).

Fuse Cardigan

The second sweater is my Fuse cardigan by Veronik Avery. If you’re a knitter, this was such a fun project!

I followed this pattern exactly as written… but I sort of wish there were instructions for wearing this beauty.

Both sides of the front of the cardigan are shaped like triangles. When the cardigan’s open, those triangles create the bulk that you see hanging down each side of the front. Fortunately, I don’t think that the overall look is bulky, mainly because the bottoms taper off towards the middle (again, due to the slanted sides of a triangle).

Closing the sweater is the tricky part. One of the front corners has three buttons, the other side has three loops. Your goal is to have each side cross over each other in the front, wrapping the looped and button corners around to the back of your neck, and attaching them there.

This is another example of the finished pattern photo not exactly matching my expectations. When I look at the pattern photo, it’s obvious that I turn my collar out while they turn the model sweater’s in. That’s no biggie, but I’ve also noticed that they’re only closing one button in the back, not three. Again, not a big deal, but man, sometimes it’s hard to interpret knit fittings with all of the fashioning that goes into the model photos.

The end result is a very sleek looking sweater with an asymmetrical closing and a large cowl-like neck.

The end result is a sweater that I truly love. BUT I know that I’m often fidgeting with it to keep everything in place. The two front sides tend to ride up and wrinkle when it’s closed, while I’d prefer to keep them flat. I think one option is adding some sort of hidden closure near the bottom of the front pieces. I was also given sage advice by an experienced crafter that I should block this one on a dress form, and that should help it to relax in the shape that it’s meant to be in when closed. As soon as my dress form arrives from the east coast, I’m going to test this idea.

If I were to knit this one again, which I might because my love is that strong, I want to try knitting it with everything exactly the same except for the front, where I would like to make each side slightly wider. This is again with the hopes of getting the front to lay even nicer when closed.

But really, I love this sweater! I love that I knit it – the process was so creative and not too difficult, but unlike any other sweater I’ve knit. And I do like the look of the sweater both while open and while (perfectly) closed.

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Any other knitters out there? What are your favorite sweater patterns? Any that really excited you while knitting as well as while wearing?

I have more to share in another post AND I have the yarn all ready for a tree-themed sweater that I picture myself wearing for many winters to come… it’s a knitters dream.