At some point in a knitter’s life, designing a garment or accessory becomes inevitable. Sometimes it’s because you modify an existing pattern to fit you or to suit your knitting preferences that you might as well write an entirely new pattern, with no disrespect to the original designer of course. And sometimes, genius just strikes.

A few of the Amiras, naturally, have gone into designing knitwear. You should check out some of these beautiful designs. The latest of which has made it to the latest edition of Knitty: My Favourite Color by Dieuwke van Mulligen.

Photo from Knitty Deep Fall 2013, taken by Lisbeth

Dieuwke has created something that will surely become a classic: contiguous sleeves (knitters everywhere will forever be thankful to SusieM for coming up with this genius idea!), clean lines, garter stitch panels to break up the monotony of stockinette, plenty of room for modifications such as adding pockets, shortening sleeves, changing colours on trims/buttonbands, and for the more adventurous knitter, a bit of intarsia to change the colour of the garter panels.

Dieuwke used worsted weight for the original pattern, but she just finished a second, 3/4 sleeve version using a DK weight and it looks just as pretty. I think if you hit gauge using a different yarn it would still turn out great.

I really want to knit this cardigan. It’s free (yay for Knitty!), it’s super simple and it’s tried and tested by Dieuwke, who is an extraordinarily talented knitter. I’ve seen some of her work firsthand so I know what I’m talking about.

I have some sweater-quantity Plucky Primo worsted so I swatched this weekend, that’s a total of 3 swatches for me. I love the look of the fabric in the Primo. As much as I would like to start this project now, I have to be disciplined and finish at least two more cardigans before then.

Again, congratulations, Dieuwke! So very proud of you!