Starmore in green

I have many favourites, but the top designer I wish I could imitate the most is Alice Starmore. I own six of her books and one by her daughter Jade, and I read them over and over again. My aim is to have knitted something from every book I have, but that is a longterm project in this case. The first book I found was Fishermen's sweaters, because it was translated into Swedish.
The pale ladies' model comes from this book, and it was a joy to knit this classic gansey with a modern touch. The men's and child's Arans are found in The Aran Collection.














If we take a closer look at the details, you can see how fine the ladies' model is. The yarn is Cortina by Solsilke, a delicate mix with e.g. cashmire. The Arans are made from regular Aran yarn and variegated sock yarn. The child sweater involved a bit too much sewing for my taste, but there is hardly a sewn stitch in the ladies' model and only side seams for the men's Aran. The most difficult part was the braids in single twisted stitches on the men's sweater, but otherwise the patterns are very detailed and user friendly even if they are long. If you want to take a look at more Starmore designs, check out her shop at Virtual yarns. Most of her books are really hard to find, but some of the kits include patterns. I ordered a few skeins of their yarn, and it was soft, tweedy and made a very warm hat.