Some patterns happen on purpose. Sweetspot happened because I kept asking, “I wonder if?”

Back when Elise Duvekot was working on her book Knit One Below, I had the opportunity to be a sample knitter. One of the patterns, On The Easy Side, was knit in Koigu Kersti — a yarn known for its wildly random indie-dyed colourways.

Koigu has this wild randomness to it — colours that look like a chaotic riot in the skein. But when I hit a very specific stitch count while working on that sweater, the colours began to pool. Not randomly — intentionally. They stacked, swirled, started dancing together. And I had that moment. You know the one — the “what if?” that lives at the core of every creator’s heart.

So I knit the sweater again in a different colourway — and it happened again. That was the spark.

I’ve always been a fan of fingering-weight yarns, so the next question was:
“Would this work with Koigu KPPPM?”
(It did. Repeatedly.)
Then: “What about other indie-dyed yarns?”
And finally: “Can I recreate this in other weights and bases?”

It became a study in stitch count, tension, and colour repeat. I started with around 40 stitches, increasing by 2 stitches every 6–8 rows until the yarn showed me where the magic would happen. That moment when the colours begin to pool just right, forming stripes, zigzags, even subtle argyle shapes — that’s the Sweetspot.

I began keeping a notebook — tracking how many stitches worked for each yarn, how many rows per strip, how the colour transformed. Every entry became a roadmap for a one-of-a-kind piece.

And here’s the part that thrills me every time: it’s not just about controlling the yarn — it’s about understanding it. I often describe Sweetspot like a chef deconstructing a dish: breaking it down into its best parts and letting each shine on its own. It’s not just about knitting the yarn — it’s about revealing what the yarn can do.

The pattern was eventually published in Knitty, and while it was written as a scarf, my true intention was always modular — strips that would join into something larger, like a colour-mapped afghan. Right now, I’m working on a new version in Patons Classic Wool, my first time translating Sweetspot to a commercially dyed yarn and a heavier weight. It’s behaving beautifully.

Sweetspot isn’t about taming colour. It’s about trusting it — and finding the rhythm that brings it into harmony.

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🧶 Try the pattern on Ravelry
📸 Scroll down to see my current afghan strips using Patons Classic Wool

✂️ Seaming Help:

Want to turn your Sweetspot strips into something bigger? Here’s a quick photo tutorial I made for seaming strips together neatly with just a crochet hook:
👉 See the tutorial on Flickr