Joanie Boatneck Sweater - Poison Grrls


I'm always looking for projects to use up the yarns in my stash, and when I saw Poison Grrls release their new pattern, the Joanie Boatneck Sweater, I knew it would be perfect! There are five colors on the garment, so it was perfect to use the odd fingering-weight yarn balls I had left over from other projects.

I had some odd colored yarns as my options, and none of them seemed to clearly go together. I arranged the yarn balls in groups to see what different color combos looked like, and I ended up deciding on this autumnal theme. I still wasn't *quite* sure if it would work, though, so I sketched the sweater and colored it in. This also helped me decided the order of colors that I wanted.

Then my baby found my sketch and chewed on it. 

I went with the 38" bust size to knit it up, and I personally like the looser fit. With 4" between the included pattern sizes, I'd rather have a sweater that is a bit too loose than too tight. (And... I'm lazy and don't want to do math to adjust the size...)


Although I didn't do everything perfectly and some of the cables don't "twist" correctly, it'll be a good snapshot of my life as a new mom knitting in my free time and not always having 100% of my mental faculties at play, ha! (Most of the time I didn't notice until several rows after the mistake, of course. At that point I called it and moved on!)

The pattern comes with lots of info, and anything not included that you don't already know is easily googled. It was a satisfying, relatively quick (for 3.25mm needles) knit, and I can definitely see myself making it up again with other colors in the future. 


TLDR Knitting details
Yarn: Various! All wool, various brands but all fingering weight
Needles: 3.25mm for stockinette and 2.75mm for ribbing (circulars)
Pattern: "Joanie Boatneck" -- Poison Grrls
Year2020, 1960s inspired
Notions: none
How historically accurate is it?  It's a good "inspired by" pattern mimicking a 1960s look worn by Joan on "Mad Men." 
Any tricky parts to the pattern?  There are a couple places where you have to keep track of stripes, cables, and shaping all at once and at different intervals, so keeping track of your counting is important. 
Did you change anything?  I didn't knit the extra 1" before doing the bottom ribbing. Just a small change to account for my shortness! 
Time to complete: A few weeks of knitting largely in the evenings and weekends.
First worn: 
Total cost: The yarn was from my stash, so I'm considering it $0 since the cost has been calculated into my other projects. I got the pattern on sale for $8.50.
Notes: The pattern is a really good one for a raglan, top-down sweater style. I still haven't knitted many projects in the round (or top-down), so I'm still beating the learning curve little by little. 


Other Poison Grrls patterns I've used:
Tongue-Tied Blouse

1 comment

  1. I love this so much! The color scheme reads very 1930s/1940s to me and I love the stripe pattern--great job!!

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