My friend Lisa and I decided it to would be fun to have our own little knit along (KAL) for a summer top – the Summer Trellis pattern was one we both found exciting and fun! She knit one in a gorgeous turqoise color and I used my Kool-Aid fade for mine!
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Materials:
- Summer Trellis Pattern
- 3 Skeins of Fingering Weight Yarn (I used Preciosa from Knit Picks)
- Size 3 and Size 4 circular knitting needles (I love my ChiaoGoo Interchangeable Set so I can easily switch my needles and cables as needed!)
- Scissors and Darning Needle
- Stitch Markers
The Pattern:
The Summer Trellis is a pattern by Jill Zielinski or @Knitteralla on Instagram.
This pattern features a yoke detail that is so fun to knit! It consists of left and right twist stitches that create this very fun diamond pattern that is just so elegant looking! It was very engaging and pretty easy to follow for an optimistic beginner or intermediate knitter.
There are a lot of different videos out there on how to do the Right Twist and Left Twist stitches and it appears that there are several different ways to knit the stitches while still getting the same outcomes! I find that very interesting! I used this tutorial for the Right Twist and this tutorial for the Left Twist by Knit Purl Hunter.
I personally decided to add lifelines between each section of the diamond charts just in case I made a mistake and needed to go back. With the ChiaoGoo Circular knitting needle set – you can add a lifeline while knitting – so it’s zero extra work! I made a video tutorial for how I did this.
I chose to knit the size 43″. It was supposed to be a few inches of positive ease, but I would say it actually fits perfectly and it doesn’t really look like there’s a lot of ease.
I chose to do the short sleeve option in the pattern instead of the 3/4 length sleeve option the pattern also give instructions for. Each sleeve took 8 grams of yarn!
Overall, I loved this pattern and will definitely be keeping this pattern handy in case I want to knit another one some day! It was also incredibly fun to share this knitting experience with my friend, Lisa!
The Yarn:
I chose to dye yarn from Knit Picks on the Preciosa base specific for this project! I wanted to show that you could easily knit a top for fairly reasonable! I purchased each skein from Knit Picks when they had their big annual sale for $5.00 each. I then used 6 packets of Kool-Aid for each skein for a total of $20.00 for the entire project! See the full tutorial for that here!
The yoke color was my Cherry Kool-Aid color and I did the entire yoke in that solid red. I knit two additional rows in the red after the yoke and then started the fade into the Black Cherry color.
I faded my three Kool-Aid colors together using the following method:
Row 1 – B
Rows 2, 3, and 4 – A
Row 5 – B
Rows 6 and 7 – A
Row 8 and 9 – B
Row 10 and 11 – A
Rows 12, 13, and 14 – B
Row 15 and 16 – A
Row 17 – B
Row 18 – A
I repeated this fade section right after the yoke was finished into the black cherry color. I also used the same method to fade into the purple at the bottom. The fade process takes 10 grams of yarn in each color to complete for the size 43.
I loved doing the fade in the plain stockinette for the body of the sweater! It kept things very interesting for me and gave me more to look forward to! I also think it looks great! 🙂
I would absolutely use this base for another top because it’s so soft and fuzzy! It made a wonderful top and I am absolutely obsessed with it!
The Reveal:
