Night Bloom

Night Bloom by Annie Haas

What is Being Made

Night Bloom is a feminine top-down yoke sweater designed by Annie Haas. This knitted garment features a sophisticated three-color stranded colorwork design, making it an excellent project for knitters looking to expand their skills in multi-color knitting techniques. The sweater is constructed using a top-down yoke construction method, which allows for easy customization and fitting as you knit.

Construction Method and Techniques

This sweater employs a top-down yoke construction, a popular method that begins at the neckline and works downward toward the hem. This approach offers several advantages: you can try on the garment as you progress, easily adjust the length to your preference, and customize the fit around the shoulders and bust.

The primary technique featured in Night Bloom is three-color stranded colorwork (also known as Fair Isle knitting). Stranded colorwork involves carrying unused yarn colors across the back of the work while knitting with the active color, creating intricate patterns with multiple hues. This technique requires attention to tension and color management to ensure even stitches and prevent loose floats on the reverse side. The three-color aspect makes this an intermediate-level project, as managing three colors simultaneously presents more complexity than traditional two-color stranded work.

Stitches Used

While specific stitch abbreviations are not detailed in the provided pattern excerpt, Night Bloom utilizes the fundamental stitches common to stranded colorwork projects: knit stitches and purl stitches worked in the round using circular needles. The yoke shaping likely incorporates decreases (such as knit two together or slip-slip-knit) to create the fitted shoulder and upper body shaping characteristic of top-down yoke sweaters.

Materials and Yarn Specifications

Night Bloom is designed to be worked with fingering weight yarn (also called sock weight), which is a fine 4-ply yarn. The pattern calls for Red Sock Blue Yarn Co. yarn in three coordinating colors:

• Main Color (MC): Silver Tips, requiring approximately 820–1480 yards depending on size, equivalent to 2–4 skeins of 480-yard/115g skeins
• Contrast Color 1 (CC1): Soot, requiring 75–170 yards, less than 1 skein
• Contrast Color 2 (CC2): Josephina, requiring 35–120 yards, less than 1 skein

The pattern accommodates multiple sizes with varying yardage requirements, allowing knitters to choose their desired finished dimensions.

Needles and Tools

Night Bloom requires two sizes of circular needles to accommodate the transition from the fitted yoke to the larger body circumference:

• US Size 4 (3.5 mm) circular needles with an 8-inch cord, or double-pointed needles (DPNs), used for the yoke section and ribbed cuffs
• US Size 5 (3.75 mm) circular needles for the main body

The use of two needle sizes is standard practice in yoke sweater construction, as the smaller needles create the necessary gauge for the fitted yoke while the larger needles accommodate the increased stitch count of the body.

Difficulty Level

Night Bloom is rated as an intermediate knitting project. This classification reflects the three-color stranded colorwork technique, which requires solid foundational knitting skills, comfort working in the round with circular needles, and the ability to manage color tension across multiple yarns. Knitters should be familiar with basic decreases and increases before beginning this project.