If you missed out on Andi Satterlund’s Spooky Collection from last year, fix it now. I fell in love with the Arachne Sweater as soon as I saw it and so did many others. There was a knit-along and I cast on along with everyone else. But life had other ideas, as it frequently does, and this sweater lay dormant just before I finished working the colorwork yoke section.
If you are looking for this pattern, Andi decided to retire her knitwear pattern business at the end of 2022 and removed all patterns for sale.
This summer I picked it back up, determined to have it finished in time to wear in October (weather permitting).
The Arachne Sweater Pattern
This top-down sweater pattern features a spiderweb colorwork pattern and is available in 7 sizes, from 34-57″ chest circumference. The pattern is cleanly laid out in two columns. The colorwork section is charted, with two charts for two size brackets. I knit the 53″ in size. I chose this size because I wasn’t totally sure that the yarn substitution would work out perfectly. Swatches were made, but tricksy because of the long floats at the bottom of the yoke. So my sweater is a little looser on me than it’s modeled on Andi, but I’m happy with it.
Knitting the pattern as part of the knit-along was a lot of fun, and I learned a new technique from it! When you get to the bottom of the colorwork section, there are a lot of stitches between the contrast color stitches. In my swatch, I carried and caught the floats as I normally would, but found that they pulled in a lot. Someone in the knit-along group mentioned the ladder back jacquard technique, which keeps the floats nice and loose. I’ll have a short video demonstrating the technique up soon.
Knitting with Berroco Quechua
I knit this sweater in Berroco Quechua, a sport-weight blend of extrafine merino wool, baby alpaca, and yak. I had used it to design a hat pattern and really loved it, so I was eager to use it in a sweater. This yarn is SO ridiculously soft. It’s like knitting with a cloud. And I was so surprised at how long the balls lasted. There’s only 164 yards in each hank but it felt like they just kept going on and on. I think I only used one hank for the contrast color.
There’s not a lot of contrast between the colors, and I did that intentionally. Berroco Quechua does have colors that would have had more contrast, so the webs would have “popped”, but I wanted something subtle. Besides, we all know that we never actually see spiderwebs before we walk into them.
Overall I’m super pleased with this sweater and glad that the weather is cooperating so I can wear it!
The Details
Cast on: September 12, 2019
Bind off: September 29, 2020
Yarn: Berroco Quechua (sport), 164 yds/50 grams: 1370 Raven (MC), 1349 Espresso (CC)
Yardage used: approximately 1,525 yds (used just over 8 skeins of the Raven, and 1 skein of the Espresso)
Size: 53
Modifications:
– Worked the yoke a little shorter than the pattern called for by moving 4 rounds to after the armhole separation (both body and sleeves).
– Fewer decreases (by half) in the body for a more relaxed fit
– Knit the sleeves separately from the body (wrote about it here)
– Finished all the edges with a sewn tubular bind-off
[…] learned a new technique when knitting my Arachne sweater–the ladder back jacquard technique! This method is an alternative or counterpart to catching […]
Hi!
Do you happen to know if this is still available anywhere? I had this pattern on my wishlist, and just saw that the designer is no longer selling on Ravelry. 😕
Hi Bea! Unfortunately Andi has retired her website and all of her patterns with it. You can try following her on Instagram (untangling.knots or andisatt) to see if she reactivates her site and patterns along with it.