Kaylee's Ashy Davis

We are kicking off a whole week of beautiful summery knits on the blog today. Each of these lighter garments is the perfect project to knit and wear during the warmer summer months. We are starting off with Kaylee's Davis pullover in Quince & Co.'s worsted weight, linen Kestrel. Tell us about it, Kaylee!

Kaylee's Davis Pullover

I bought the yarn for this sweater last summer right after Quince & Co. released the glorious deep gray color, ash. I fell so hard for its stormy hue and knew that I had to make something from it. I had seen Jaime’s beautiful nude color Davis pullover and knew it was the perfect simple garment I would wear over and over again.

Pattern: Davis by Pam Allen
Materials: 11 skeins of Quince & Co. Kestrel in Ash (available in-store)
Size Made: 54 1/2” (13” of positive ease)
Modifications: Shortened sleeves by 2”, Reverse 3-needle bind off at shoulder (so there is a visible seam)

Cut to one year later and my stormy summertime sweater is FINALLY done. It was a bit of a long road getting here, but I couldn’t be more pleased to have it finished! The moral of my knitting story…swatch for your sweaters and carefully block your swatches. Especially when you are knitting with linen.

The very first attempt I made at this sweater was much too large. I didn’t wash my swatch after knitting it up and my gauge was off quite a bit. It turns out linen grows TONS when you work with it and wash it. Instead of learning from my mistakes, I pulled all of my progress out and started over sizing down one size and using needles that were one size smaller. This made a garment that was way too small for me. After two failures I felt totally defeated, pulled out my progress once more, and put the yarn away for the winter.

This spring I was feeling refreshed and excited to attempt my Davis once again. Luckily, Kestrel is a very sturdy chain-plied ribbon that held up well to being knit with over and over. I started by making 3 different swatches, washed and dried all of them before deciding on a needle size.

Once I figured out exactly what needle size and sweater size I needed to make, this was honestly one of the fastest garments I have ever knit. I think from cast-on to completely finished it took me one week! It is totally magical and I wear it just as much as I expected I would.

So definitely make a Davis sweater in beautiful linen Kestrel, just learn from my mistakes and knit a gauge swatch first :)