The weather has definitely taken a SHARP turn towards dark and windy winter this past week and I’ve pulled out all of my favorite worsted weight short sleeve sweaters as armor during my mad dashes from house to car. I love the medium weight fabric of worsted wool but I hate smothering in all of those cozy layers whenever I duck into a steamy coffee house so I usually opt for short sleeves in my heavier sweaters. So practical and so much faster to knit! My newest sweater is a shortened version of  Clare Lee’s free Brick sweater sweater from Ravelry in  Wool of the Andes Tweed Down Heather. This pattern is a great basic sweater shape with raglan sleeves that’s easy to customize with little duplicate stitch motifs and changing the length of the sleeves and body to suit your mood (and the weather).

Down Heather is one of my favorite grey and I realized that it was the perfect shade to represent Portland’s cloudy skies which also meant that it needed a little rain cloud duplicate stitched on at the end to top it off!

I fiddled around with different cloud shapes with my handy knitter’s graph paper but just couldn’t get the right shape. Eventually I turned to Ravelry for some ideas and found the perfect Cloud motif on Tricksy Knitter’s site and happily duplicate stitched it on after I was finished.

I can’t wait for the rains to clear and the next clear, crisp, golden morning so that I can walk through the neighborhood in this sweater. Eventually it will disappear as another layer under my heavy winter jacket as I bumble around the neighborhood, but there will be those brief (glorious!) moments when it shines on it’s own around the house or in those cozy tea houses I like to visit.