The End of the Year of the Sweater

We each knit a sweater for ourselves this year! Emily is sporting her Lush Cardigan and I am wearing my Flax

So Many Sweaters!

Making 2015 the ‘Year of the Sweater’ here at Tin Can Knits was amazing. We heard from so many knitters who completed their very first garment, gifted sweaters to loved ones, and those dedicated knitters who completed 12 sweaters (or more) in just 12 months! To help things along we added some helpful tutorials to our list, including sweater blocking, German short rows, and our Playdate stripes pattern hack. You can find our complete list of tutorials and techniques here.

Lucky KAL Winners

I had so much fun perusing the LONG list of sweaters completed in 2015, you can see all of the ones tagged with ‘tck12sweaters2015’ here. So much inspiration all in one place! For those brave knitters who completed our challenge we offered 3 prizes, and the winners (chosen by random number generator) are:

1) A sweater quantity of Rainbow Heirloom Sweater: Ravelry heidi197
2) A signed copy of our book Road Trip: Ravelry fairknitwear
3) Our entire Tin Can Knits ebook library: Ravelry tatiealexe

Congratulations! We also wanted to give special mention to Thesejoys, who completed her VERY FIRST SWEATER in April of 2015 and still managed to complete 12, and we were particularly impressed with Undone57 who completed 24 sweaters, Rohart who completed 22, and loststitches who completed 20! Here are a few of our fave shots from the KAL:

Top row: undone57’s A Muted Christmas, thesejoys Anders, barbie5’s Playdate, katherinelynn04’s Delancey,

Middle: more of undone57’s Christmas in July sweaters (I’m a fan), sweetbeej’s Wenlock and her Knitters Dude

Bottom: Diplodocus‘ Marius Sweater

What did we knit?

I competed a grand total of (drumroll please)……24 sweaters!!! There were baby sweaters, gifted sweaters, new designs, Christmas sweaters and even one for myself. Here are a few of the highlights:

This year I designed the Hitchcock Sweater for Pom Pom Quarterly, my wee prototype is on the left and the finished ladies is on the right

I knit 2 Jones sweaters, a Flax sweater (with added cable on the front, more on that later), 3 Christmas sweaters, and the Spotlight Sweater

I knit a few Flax this year, including a grey one for my new nephew, a striped version for a friends new baby, and a green one that fit Hunter for about 3 seconds (but Jones is making good use of). I also knit Ellis a wee Prairie Fire and completed the Grace cardi I started ages ago for my mum.

The top is a new design coming soon, the middle is the first sweater I completed in 2015, the Playdate, and the bottom is a wee Antler I knit for a new babe.

Emily scraped in under the wire, completing 12 sweaters including an Antler to match with Max, gifts for her nieces and nephew, and some new designs of course! Here are a few of the sweaters Emily finished in 2015:

Antler Cardigan

Playdate

Flax Hack

North Shore

Lush

Peanut

Well, if that isn’t inspiration to get started on your 2016 knitting goals, whatever they may be, I don’t know what is!  We’re planning a new KAL (this one will be short and sweet) starting soon, so be sure to get on our email list if you aren’t there already!  Or find us on social media:

More lovely sweaters from TCK: