Annual Christmas Sweater: Black Santa... Gnomes

Back in 2014, I started a tradition where I knit myself a Christmas themed sweater to wear every year for my family’s Christmas get together. If you read this blog regularly, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, you knit that one sweater that one year and then abandoned the idea.” While that may be more characteristic of me, I am happy to inform you all that I have indeed knit myself a Christmas sweater every year since 2014… I just haven’t posted about any of them on the blog. But this December, that’s going to change. Each week this month, I’m going to be sharing each of my sweaters on here, finally.

The Concept

The only thing I knew going into the 2015 sweater was that I wanted to incorporate a black Santa. I was first thinking about an intarsia Santa smack dab in the middle of my chest complete with 3D pom pom on his hat. But I don’t know how to do intarsia so I scrapped that idea and decided on a round yoke sweater instead.

Like my previous year’s sweater, I used a mix of patterns to achieve the results I wanted. For the overall body, I used Winter Doldrums by Carla Pletzer as a jumping off point. It’s a great free pattern in multiple sizes that did exactly what I needed it to do. At that point, I had never knit a round yoke sweater so, me being me, I also bought a Craftsy class with Amy Detjen just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything big. And then for the colorwork, I used a modified version of Nisse by Tasha Moss for the Santas and I made up my own color pattern for the trees.

I wanted to keep the overall feel of Tasha’s pattern the same. I wanted it to look like the Santas were standing on snow in front of a blue sky. I knew I didn’t want the original carrots that Tasha had in her pattern because what the hell do carrots have to do with Christmas? Carrots, in fact, do not have anything thing to do with Christmas. But if I’m calling the white part of the sweater snow, and the blue part of the sweater sky, then why the hell are there evergreen trees underground? I don’t have an answer for that but whatever.

Still not considering the logistics of the evergreen trees, I trucked on to the Santas which I figured would be simple enough. Swap the blue jackets for a nice Christmas red and swap the peachy skin color for the dark brown skin color and I’d be good to go. Fast forward to me showing the sweater off and a person saying, “Cool! I want a Santa Gnome sweater.” Well, I don’t but that is indeed what I knit for myself and I’m going to have to live with that regret for the rest of my life.

The Fit

Ufdah. The only word I can think of to describe the fit of this sweater is bad. First, I knit the entire body too short. If I remember right, I wanted it to be a little more cropped because I have a 50s inspired skirt that I wanted to wear with it. But in order to get the color pattern to fit, I had to give it too much positive ease for the look I was going for. In hindsight, I should have cut one of the repeats in half and I wouldn’t have had to fudge to get the fit so much. But hey, the oversized crop top is kind of back in style. I guess I’m a trendsetter. Is it trendsetting when it’s unintentional?

The second issue is that I knit the sleeves way too long. I don't know, I must have thought I was knitting this sweater for Kevin Garnett or something because there is no other explanation for why I knit such long sleeves. With the freakishly long sleeves and the cropped body, the whole sweater looks ridiculous laying flat after I wash it.

The third issue I had with fit is the neckline. As I was decreasing, I was getting more and more worried about it fitting over my head. This was mostly because when I switched over to the 16-inch circular needle, it made the whole thing look super small, which is to be expected. The more I decreased the more nervous I got about it. I was knitting on a deadline and I wasn’t about to knit it too small, not be able to get my head into the thing and then have to reknit it. So, I stopped my decreases too early and ended up with a neckline that’s too wide, which coincidentally, is sorta in style right now, too. I really am a trendsetter.

So, You Hate the Whole Thing, huh?

You might be surprised to learn that I don't hate this sweater. Fit issues and color pattern blunders aside, I’m still really proud of it. It still amazes me sometimes that each year I’ve set out to knit a Christmas sweater and each year I actually do. That’s some character development I never expected from myself. And you know, maybe the Santa Gnomes have grown on me over the years.

Next week, we’ll take a look at my 2016 sweater. Spoilers, it’s another round yoke and there were no ill-fated color changes that were made.

Don't miss my progress on my 2018 Christmas Sweater(vest)! Follow me on Instagram to see all my work-in-progress shots.