Esther Sweater in Black: Progress Update

I generally gravitate toward working with more fun, colorful yarns—but when it comes to what I actually reach for to wear, black wins almost every time.

So I thought it was about time I made myself a black sweater. I just didn’t want it to be plain stockinette. I wanted something with a little texture or interest to it.

I had already been looking at the Storm Sweater by PetiteKnit and mentioned it here in my post-Christmas knitting plans. Originally I was thinking about doing it in a lighter gray, but after seeing a couple versions in black on Ravelry, I thought maybe this could work.

For yarn choice, I ended up getting Drops Extra Fine Merino (in black, obviously). I’ve used it before for my brother’s NJ Devils sweater and I liked it. It’s enjoyable to work with, it’s affordable, and I remember it having a sort of springy stitch definition that I thought might be good for holding texture.

But when it came in the mail, and I got to swatching, something just wasn’t clicking.

I started with the recommended 4mm needles and I was honestly getting lost trying to follow the chart—the texture is pretty subtle, and if I put it down for a second, I couldn’t tell what was a knit and what was a purl. It was at this point I started to doubt whether this particular black yarn would even be good for a textured sweater.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

Next I tried swatching with 3.5mm needles, and this time it was easier to see what I was working with. But by that point, my swatch was already much smaller than the intended gauge, and it still wasn’t enough of a difference. At least 3 of the 4 texture sections would still look too muddy for it to feel worth all the trouble.

Looking back, I realized the black Storm sweaters I liked had some cotton in the fiber content, which probably helped the texture stand out more—but obviously I didn’t put that together until after I had already started.

Back to the drawing board I went—and by drawing board, I mean Ravelry filtered with the textured attribute. I still wanted something textured, but I didn’t want cables. It just didn’t sound like a fun idea to learn how to do cables for the first time in black.

I had seen the Esther Sweater before, but it never really interested me or felt like my style. It wasn’t until I saw it knit in black on Ravelry that I started to see it differently. In black it felt a lot cooler, and a lot more like something I would actually wear. The larger sections of texture also seemed to show up better in a variety of different colors and fibers, which was exactly what I was looking for.

So I swatched it using the recommended 4mm needles, blocked it, and was still so unsure about it until I unpinned it and saw it in natural lighting.

At this point, I stopped feeling discouraged about my textured black sweater idea and actually started to feel excited again.

I’ve been working on it for about a week now—here’s where it’s at:

So far the pattern has been pretty easy to memorize, and it’s kind of addicting to work on. I’ll probably have more to say once it’s finished, but for now I’m really loving how it’s turning out, and I have a feeling this might end up being my favorite sweater.