Ever since we introduced Chroma, I’ve been enjoying its versatility for patterns. The subtle color changes turn simple stranded knitting into complicated-looking colorwork, and even plain stockinette into works of art. So how about some stripes?

One of my favorite things in Astronomy class in college was examining emission and absorption spectra of various elements and then looking for them in stars. Not only was the science fascinating, but it was beautiful as well. When we were tossing around ideas for a new sweater in Chroma, my thoughts turned immediately to those lovely spectra.

Obviously there would be quite a problem working a full spectrum line-by-line into a sweater. There’s just too many rows, and the colors wouldn’t line up with their correct nanometer values! Not to mention it would need to look nice in colors other than just the bright spectral rainbow. So, I decided that the Fibbonacci sequence would deliver the perfect result. And the Chromatic Pullover is the end product!

Since the repeats in Chroma are a pre-determined length (and it’s pretty long!) it would have been wasteful to make the sleeves match each other or the body. Knowing that you’d end up with a totally random start point in the repeat depending on the size and piece you were working, I ran with the idea and plugged the sleeve length into a random stripe generator. Not only do the sleeves not match, but every instance of this sweater ever knit will not match any other. I love it!

The pullover comes in kit form in the original Spectra colorway and the more subtle Beachy colorway, in finished bust sizes 30 (34, 38, 42, 46)”. The download version of the pattern includes another size – 50″.

Part of what makes designing knitwear so fun is seeing all the variations come out of each knitted project. This pattern especially has so much possible variation built in. I would love to see how your Chromatic Pullover turns out!