Awwww….I’m in love with this sweet little Peach Fuzz!!!
I highly recommend this pattern. Especially if it is your first sweater. It is a wonderful introduction to sweater making and will teach you all the fundamentals without being overwhelming. It’s the perfect intro to things like short rows, picking up stitches, and ribbing by knitting and purling through the back loops. It’s also perfect for experienced knitters looking for a nice easy project to zip through with little time and thought. AND….it’s super cute and cozy.
This sweater is the inclusion of many elements from my knitting journey that mean a lot to me. Let’s start with Melanie Berg. Not only is Melanie one of the coolest knitting designers on the planet, but she is also a very generous, caring, fun, compassionate, sweet and amazing human and friend. I had the pleasure of collaborating with her this year on a new and exciting project called “Row Maps.” You can read about them here.
Although I have worked closely with many of Melanie’s patterns, I have never completed one myself. It was important to me to bring one of her patterns to life in a physical way, so I chose Peach Fuzz, for lots of reasons, the first being that Melanie designed it.
I also scratched a life dream off my bucket list this year by visiting Stephen & Penelope in Amsterdam. It’s my favourite yarn shop on the planet. It’s truly perfect in every way. As I love West Wool Tandem, I filled up an entire suitcase with as much as I could get my hands on, having no idea what I’d do with it, but trusting that the right project will inspire me at just the right time.
Soooooo…..I chose Tandem as the yarn to celebrate my time in Amsterdam. The colours I chose were inspired by these bright orange and blue bikes we saw all over town. This particular colour combo seemed to be everywhere we went and was a very special part of our trip. To pull in an element of these sweet bikes (pics included here) I decided to do a two colour version with orange as the main body colour, like the body of the bikes, and striping on the sleeves to represent bike spokes.
The final product is a perfect inclusion of Melanie’s masterful design, Stephen’s luscious yarn from his shop, and memories of the sweet bikes that brought us so much joy. Wearing it feels like a big cozy Mel hug and takes me back to a time that was joyous, carefree, and creatively inspiring.
Another thing I was hoping for with this project was to zip along quickly, and have a simple, somewhat mindless knit along the way, so I did veer off the path a bit here. I decided to double the Tandem, creating a (super) bulky weight, which meant I adjusted a lot of the math to meet my own larger gauge. I also went my own way with the striping, which meant I had to adjust some of the instructions on those rows as well.
I also made one tiny tweak to the collar as it hit me right in the adam’s apple, which was slightly uncomfortable. All I did was fold the front, center collar behind the back, and seamed it on the wrong side along the colour change edge. This created a nice curved effect and pulled it down the neck to just the right spot.
I really hope you decide to knit this sweater and make it your own. Trust me, you’ll be so happy you did!!!!
Happy Knitting!!!
Chad
❤️❤️❤️
