Batwing Knit

A vintage knitting machine pattern in some muted fall colours.

Batwing knitting machine sweater on a dress form, detail of hem with brown leatherette label with a heart

The booklet that came with my knitting machine also had a pattern for a striped ladies pullover with V-neck, DP 2219. This seemed like a fun thing to do with the knitting machine that wasn’t a rectangle of some sort, so I set out on a quest to complete the pullover. This started with dyeing yarn. I chose upcycled quarter round yarn, a sock weight with 425 m/100 g and tried to dye it in the colour scheme of a picture I found on the internet.

It didn’t turn out the way I hoped, although I’m not sure exactly what I was hoping for. However, once I started knitting it up, I knew it didn’t really fall within the colours I would love to wear. Still determined to see if the pattern would work, I continued. I made one major change, by decreasing the depth of the v-neck, but apart from that followed the instructions. I finished knitting the front and back, and blocked them. Then I lost motivation and it sat in a bag for a while until I met up with a friend. These colours suit her much better, and I knew I needed some sort of external motivation if I were to ever finish it, so I asked if she might be interested. She was.

So I knit the neckband and after some cursing and annoyance managed to get that installed in a way I liked. It’s probably not the way the pattern intended, but it’s on there now, so it’ll do! The sleeves and bottom still rolled quite badly, so I decided that it needed cuffs. I first knit some in a mock rib on the knitting machine and had them attached before deciding that the join was too awful. So I ripped it all back, cast on ribbing and knit it by hand, both around the cuffs and the bottom.

I think I probably asked before summer whether my friend was interested (providing no guarantees on when it would be completed) and it still took me until September to get it finished, but it is done! She enjoys it, I’m happy to have made something out of the yarn that I wouldn’t use for myself, I liked testing the pattern and doing something different on the machine. A bit delayed, but still a win in the end!

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Author: Luus

Sewing, knitting, reading and listening to lots of podcasts.

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