FINISHED! Cinnabar Sweater

First finished sweater for the decade is this sweet textured Cinnabar Sweater designed by Rachael Raimo of Maven Crafted. Can you even believe this is her first sweater pattern?

This sweater is designed with a couple of different mix and match options, but I chose to knit it with the full length fitted sleeve option. I encourage you to take a look at the project pages of other knitters as well to see the crop length, and the BELL sleeve she has also included.
My reasoning for the choices I made fall mostly in when I intended to wear this sweater. I knew I wanted to be able to wear this to work under my lab coat and I thought the bell sleeves would make that difficult. But I DO intend on making a cropped bell version in black for out of work wear 😉

The sweater construction for all versions starts out the same with raglan increases and some short rows in the middle back just after the ribbing. I absolutely love the wider neckline as this is a worsted weight sweater and tight necklines often end up too warm on me (especially in layers!) The raglan is also rather deep, giving a cozy snuggly feel. I knit the size 36 inch chest, which gives me about 3 inches of positive ease at my full bust, and I think it is perfect for this style sweater.

One thing I appreciated about the testing call Rachael put out is that her first sample was knit in a Lion Brand yarn. She knit subsequent samples in the different length and sleeve options, partnering with an Indie dyer, but I love that her first “reveal” was very approachable in terms of “cost inclusion”. I chose to knit mine in a blown yarn that I picked up at my LYS from Juniper Moon Farms. This is the Stargazer Brushed line in colorway Bacchus which is 85/15 Baby Llama/Nylon blend. This gave me a slight halo appearance, and the sweater itself is SO fuzzy and also immensely warm. I think this was my first time knitting with Llama, and actually really enjoyed it. I would love to pick up more of this yarn in the future.

Overall, this sweater was a super speedy enjoyable knit. The texture rows kept it from becoming “boring” to knit, but still was easy to knitflix during. I’m really looking forward to getting started on my second version 🥰

xo-lj