Pattern Testing the SilverBell Sweater
Many of you know I have been on a yarn fast for a number of months. As a result that kind of limits the amount of testing I can sign up for. But I was very, very lucky to be given this Winter Nights yarn so I could sign up to test Chantal’s SilverBell Sweater. Because if I was going to make this sweater, I wanted mine to be sparkly too! It was so nice to have the yarn ready to go when the pattern arrived, it feels like that hasn’t happened for quite awhile!
Working on this sweater became really addicting. In less than a week I was pretty much done the body of the sweater, and I was not exclusively working on this project either! Part of the addictive-ness of this pattern is the fact that it works up quickly. Pretty large needles mean you make progress, but the thinner yarn means you don’t have to wear a sheep once you’re done.
This sweater knit up so fast that I would take multiple pictures of it a day, so that I could post later on, and it did come in handy later to have so many photos ready to post!
Possibly the best feature of the SilverBell Sweater is the sleeves. The balloon sleeves are really fun, AND when making them they are big enough that you can use 16″ circular needles to make them even more fun to make! Narrowing down the sleeves was the main thing that I really felt like I was “testing”. I tried 2 different needle sizes because with the smaller size, once I bound off my hand was NOT going through that little cuff. With the size of needle that ended up in the pattern, I would definitely encourage you to still bind off loosely. I did just a regular bind off as per the pattern, (important as a pattern tester), but of course you could always choose something more stretchy, like a tubular bind off I think would be stunning, even though it is extra work.
Unfortunately you can’t get Winter Nights on the Lion Brand website right now, but if you’re near a Joann’s apparently they have all the Winter Nights yarn! And if you want a sparkly SilverBell Sweater but can’t get the yarn, you could always find a fingering or lace weight yarn with sparkles to hold together with a non-sparkly yarn!
I would definitely recommend grabbing this pattern on Ravelry (especially on release day, American Thanksgiving 2019). Even if you don’t start until December, it could still be your holiday sweater!
