I really think I’m on a sweater kick this year, and it’s got me thinking an awful lot about favorites. You see, now that I’m knitting a little cardigan for myself, and I’ll be starting one soon in Tropical colors (thanks for your votes, everybody!), what I find most interesting is that in both cases I pretty much want to make the same sweater. A V-neck, lightly shaped cardigan. That’s pretty much The Cardigan I Want all the time.

I must admit that being a designer has its advantages. I can knit the same sweater several times but it doesn’t really look the same. Different weights, different colors, different sizes, and maybe a different finishing touch, but I can essentially just plug those things into a formula and get my same, favorite, familiar sweater. My ‘go-to’ cardigan is based on a simple, light grey alpaca cardigan that I picked up at a thrift store for $5. But I love it so much that I want to re-create it over and over again. So, I just plug a new gauge into the same shape, and out pops a ‘new’ sweater.

I have lots of tools at my disposal, so I can knit that sweater in random stripes of City Tweed DK, as modeled by my assistant here..

And then, using some color input, turn around and make a colorwork version in Palette next.

Now, I realize that you all probably have a favorite, too, but maybe don’t have access to all the fancy programs that I do. So, riddle me this, dear readers – if you could have a pattern for a ‘go-to’ garment, what would it be, and why? If you could decide on, say, a collection of ‘template’ patterns, what would you include? What sort of modifications do you always seem to do that you wish were just written in already?

Let me know what you think in the comments – there might just be a ‘perfect’ pattern in your future!

(OH, and a PS – the colors of Palette in my ‘Tropical’ set are Navy, Marine Heather, Calypso Heather, Tranquil, Pistachio, Alfalfa, Peapod, and Limeade Heather.)