Moon Gothic

Back in the fall of 2025 I went to a gigantic crafts market where I bought way too much handdyed yarn, including this lovely green wool. And I knew from the begining I wanted to do some kind of a colorwork project with it-- I would've preferred to do a black-and-green project instead of white, but since the green is so dark I was worried there wouldn't be enough contrast. So, for maximum contrast, white it is.

I finally got to start this project in May and for the pattern I had decided I wanted to find an antique cross stitch/filé crochet/whatever pattern from the AntiquePatternLibrary and modify it so it would fit my gauge/area I wanted to use.

Now, one problem is that I don't remember which book this pattern originated from, so I can't link back to it, but also I did modify it a bit so it is Ever So Slightly Different

The original is the middle one;

While mine looked like this (I did do a few changes to the very bottom hem that aren't visible in this version of the pattern)

So I started with I did a gauge swatch to plan out the size of the sweater, once done I was able to figure out the size of the colorwork area and plan out the pattern. (The tricky part was figuring out how to fill it out nicely etc)

Mistake 1) I did not make the colorwork area wide enough. You see. When I went into this project, I had the specific vision where only one side of the garment had colorwork on it while the other side was blank. And when doing the numbers, somewhere along the way I forgot to take into considderation the stitches I would cast on in the middle to make it wide enough. So the colorwork, that I wanted to cover the entire left side of the sweater, does not actually cover the entire left side but only like 1/3 of the body.

And I did not realize that until it was so late that I didn't want to redo the whole thing anymore. But, I still felt like there wouldn't be enough colorwork for the garment for it to feel balanced. So I had to change my plans, because, you see. This wasn't meant to be a sweater from the start. I was actually going to make a vest (mainly because I wanted to have a smaller project). But I figured I could make it work if I made it a full sweater and did the left sleeve in colorwork too. So I later also planned out the pattern for the sleeve, and to be fair I am glad I went this route because honestly, I just do not wear vests anyways. Like sure that could be because I don't own any vests and maybe I would wear them if I had some. But also honestly if I ever feel cold enough I want to wear an extra layer, it needs to go over shoulders, upper arms and neck, not my abdomen, so it's not like this would keep me much warmer anyways.

One fun thing about this project though was that I got to try a new technique; back when I made my Chrimbus socks in 2025, I followed along a sock knitting tutorial by NimbleNeedles with a unique cast on method. You're meant to start knitting the socks toe-up in the round, but when I made those socks I realized you could probably just start knitting the two sides separately, and I figured you could probably make a seamless shoulder this way. So, I tried that out, and honestly, it worked out perfectly.

Other than that I just worked on this sweater much like I did with my past few cardigans, it's just that this time I casted on extra stitches at the front too to connect everything instead of just the back, and once I was satisfied with the arm hole size I was able to start knitting in the round instead of doing the front and back separately&flat

Mistake 2) I tried to do shaping for the neck hole and chose a poor way to cast on extra stitches on the right (blank) side, so even after blocking the fabric buckles up a little there. This was another one of those "by the time I realized the mistake I couldn't be bothered to go back" and "I hope blocking will fix that" (it didn't)

(Thankfully by the time I did realize the mistake on the front I was able to avoid it when I did the backside) (But man, I wish I had done this mistake on the back instead of the front)

Mistake 3) I thought I had made a mistake with my calculations and made the arm holes too small, so I kept on knitting to make the holes bigger. I shouldn't have.

And once again, I did not realize this mistake until it was WAY TOO LATE. No way I was gonna frog and redo all nearly the whole damn sweater (mind you, I would've had to rip back past the central motif flower to lift the arm hole's bottom edge). So I chose violence instead

Picked up stitches. Knit a little patch.

Sewed it down. It definitely left a little seam, but to me it was a lesser evil at this point, especially due to

Mistake 4) I tried to do an intarsia colorwork in the round-technique but failed to do it correct. You could probably see the hideous gaping holes in my stitches next to the colorwork in the "hole too big" photos. Yeah, so I really did want to knit this in the round for my own convenience and so I wouldn't have to sew two panels together, hell I even considdered knitting this in one large panel and leaving one side open under the arm so I'd only have one seam from sewing.

But I wanted to try this technique for doing intarsia in the round where you twist your yarns and make this funky lil loop etc, just so you can do your colorwork without creating giant floats.

I did not do it correct. I hoped I'd figure out how to do it right if I kept on going and practising. That did not happen. And at some point I just accepted defeat. At this point I had done so many mistakes with this project anyway I kind of did not care anymore. Because you know what? I'm allowed to knit shitty garments. They don't have to be actually good. They can suck ass, it's fine, I can be a bad knitter, it's not the end of the world. The point is that I'm having fun and best case scenario I learn new things along the way.

I did later try to patch/hide the holes with some duplicate stitching, and it did kinda help hide it a little bit, but honestly it just mostly added bulk to the fabric so it still stood out. So yeah, I just let it go.

In anycase, I eventually got to the bottom ribbing

Mistake 5) I should've continued the ribbing between the end of the colorwork.

I wasn't sure how I wanted to end the colorwork-- I had originally hoped I could do the bottom ribbing in the green, but I realized I might actually run out of yarn if I did that, and I definitely needed more for the sleeve so I figured I should do the bottom ribbing in white instead. So then I just had to decide if I wanted to do either make the sweater long enough I could finish the whole colorwork pattern before going into the ribbing (I felt like the sweater would've been way too long if I did that), just end the colorwork and switch to the ribbing (felt like it would cut out strangely), continue the colorwork in the ribbing (IDK I didn't think it'd look good) or, what I ended up doing; I continued the colorwork while I did the ribbing around it as normal. And that's where we get to the part I regret; at the very end of the pattern I should've done a little bit of ribbing between the two strands of green, because doing too large an area in plain stockinette makes the bottom curl up just a little bit, so if I had done just a few rows of ribbing there, it would've fixed that. But, it is what it is

Anyway once the body was done, I quickly did the plain white sleeve for the right side, just so I could plan out the shape/size of the sleeve. And then, I planned out the colorwork pattern for the sleeve

It took a few tries, but this is what I started with

Mistake 6) I shouldn't have centered the colorwork pattern so perfectly. I feel like when the pattern is on there, right in the middle, it feels like the image is "pushed back", where as if I had moved the pattern a little to the left, it would be more visible from the front. Not a huge issue, but definitely something I would like to keep in mind in the future

Mistake 7) I thought it'd be silly for me to do colorwork in the armpit, like it wouldn't be visible and would just add extra fabric bulk under the arm, so I left the area blank. I shouldn't have have, or at least I should've made the blank area smaller. Because yeah, the "intarsia in the round" method I had been using still wasn't working, and if anything it felt even harder to do when working on a tiny sleeve, it felt like the colorwork was puckering even more on the edges.

I was so frustrated that by the time I got to the decreases, I decided to change my pattern so that the colorwork went all around the arm without a blank "underbelly", just so I could actually do colorwork in the round in peace, without the ugly gaping stitches or the puckering. Some would probably considder that a mistake since it does make it look like there's a strange white box in the armpit of this sweater, it's a design inconsistency, but honestly, because this was an intentional change I don't considder changing my plans another mistake. I knew it'd look strange/bad, but I did it anyways.

(The true Mistake 8 was some actual honest-to-god colorwork mistakes at the very begining of the sleeve, but I was able to fix those two mistaken stitches with duplicate stitches)

Once the sleeve was done (along with the ribbing), I finished the sweater by doing the neck ribbing with the remaining yarn.

Mistake 9) While I was working on the body, at some point I did a bunch of mistakes in the colorwork at one point and it would've required me to redo multiple rows. I didn't want to do that, so I instead intentionally dropped stitches one by one and redid them with a crochet hook. This worked just fine, but because this was at the edge of the colorwork, it like, untied the yarn so the redone part was kind of just floating freely. If you can spot the big stitch marker sticking through the fabric on the pre-block photos, that's the spot, and when I finished the sweater I wove the loose stitches together so it wouldn't have massive holes. (Just forgot to mention this earlier)

And the sweater was almost done. All I had left to do was block it and weave in the ends. But instead of showing you those images separately, here they are, side by side!

Left is pre-blocking, right is post-blocking

Yes, the final mistake. Mistake 10) I made my gauge swatch too small, so even though I blocked that swatch it didn't give me an accurate number on how much the sweater would grow with blocking.

The sweater definitely went from "the perfect size" to "slightly oversized with sleeves that're way too long". And I did debate about ripping back the sleeves and redoing the ribbing, just to get them right. But in the end, this sweater has many mistakes that needed correcting. This final one would've been an easy fix, but I simply figured it wasn't worth the time and effort anymore. The sleeves are fine if I roll back them back a little.

(Sidenote, I don't think the yarn dye bled and stained the white yarn, I think it's just the lighting it the photos being a bit different)

My Green Sweater of Many Mistakes was done, and that's good enough. I learned many things during this project, and despite the issues I enjoyed the process, and I will wear this silly thing anyways. It's fine, and that's all that matters.

I (think, I already forgor) used 4 mm knitting needles for this project (3,5 for the ribbing), the green as mentioned earlier is a handdyed yarn so no point in me mentioning where it's from, but it was 100% superwash Falkland merino wool in DK. The skein was 100g with 225m and I used almost all of it.

Meanwhile the white yarn was Lana Grossa's Cool Wool, which is 100% Merino Extrafine Virgin Wool (I only picked this one because it was the right size and was easily available at my local fabric store). The color is 0431 and this one came in 50 gram balls with 160m in all of them, I used about six and a half balls of it (so about 525~ grams or 1040~ meters)