January 2026

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Note: I'm using a photo of PetiteKnit's Cumulus blouse as a placeholder, until I take a decent photo of my January project. My self-drafted pattern is quite different from this sweater, but I couldn't be bothered to find a better picture.

I finished almost all the projects I'd started in 2025 before the end of the year and ended up unexpectedly casting on a new project on the 1st day of 2026. Throughout January, as I knitted this project, I found that I rather enjoyed knowing exactly (and without having to do any calculations) when I had started the project and for how long I'd been knitting it. This is how it occurred to me that I could challenge myself to start a new project on the 1st day of every month in 2026.

My January project is a simple v-neck worked using a self-drafted contiguous recipe. The neck and cuffs are made of a double-knitted band and the hem in half-twisted rib. This is a very simple recipe, completely seamless, with minimal amount of picked-up stitches and almost no finishing (I only needed to weave in some ends), which is the reason I chose to self-draft, instead of buying a pattern. Although I'm sure there should be a similar pattern somewhere out there, sometimes it's easier to self-draft than search through thousands of patterns for what you're looking for.

Project data:

Pattern: self-drafted
Yarn: Drops Alpaca (5565 Light Moroon)
Main needles: 3.25mm
Gauge: 25 sts, 33 rows = 10 cm
Main details: contiguous construction, set-in sleeves, v-neck in double knitted band, cuffs idem, hem in half twisted rib.

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