Marble Mount
The Marble Mount pullover, designed by Joji Locatelli, is a circular yoke sweater knit top down and in the round. I love the elegant femininity that the lace detail adds to this otherwise simple design. This pattern is incredibly versatile allowing you to craft as simple or bold a design as you want. When knit in a stately black or charcoal grey, this garment instantly becomes a staple piece for any capsule wardrobe. Choose a variegated colorway such as what I selected to create a head turning piece that can take you from office to happy hour with ease.
Project Notes
This sweater is designed to be close-fitting with no positive ease, but you can easily go up a size if you prefer a looser fit. Absolutely no finishing is required other than weaving in those ends and giving it a good block to open up the lace detail in the yoke.
I knit the size 4 (38” bust) using a US 5 circular needle for the body and a US 4 needle for the ribbing. I ended up needing just over 300 grams (1380 yards) of yarn. I followed the pattern measurements for the body length exactly, but added another two decrease repeats to lengthen the sleeves ~ 2 inches. After blocking, I probably would have been fine to knit the sleeves as is, but overall I am very happy with the fit.
For my yarn I selected "The Meg" in the colorway Together. The Meg was made for sweater knitting as it is the only way to get a perfectly matched dye lot of hand dyed yarn since it is one continuous 500 gram skein of yarn. There is no need to rotate your skeins so no extra ends to weave in! I only had to weave in 4 ends for this entire sweater.
I really enjoyed this knit and give this pattern a 4 out 5 yarn balls. It was very well written with clear instruction and straight forward construction. The yoke was engaging with repeats that were easy to follow, and the mindless garter of the body and sleeves was just what I needed to relax after a day on my feet in the dye lab or at work. This project is a great fit for intermediate knitters. With a few sweater projects off my needles now, I found this pattern to be very easy to follow as it uses standard top down construction with a small short row section after the collar and increases at regular intervals as you knit the yoke. The lace repeat is quite simple, but may be a little challenging for a beginner to follow while simultaneously balancing the spine stitch increases. At one point I had ~20 stitches markers on my project to mark the different design elements and definitely needed to check my instructions line by line. I found this to be incredibly engaging and addicting rather than difficult. Once you split for sleeves, the remainder of the pattern is endless garter with the exception of the ribbing on the hem and sleeve cuffs.
I plan to incorporate my sweater into my regular wardrobe rotation as it fits my artistically boho style wonderfully while still being perfectly polished for the corporate office. I can't wait to answer the question "where did you get your sweater?" with "I made it"! I would happily knit this again and would really love to have a summer version with slightly shorter with sleeves that hit just above the elbow.
Confession Time
I had to knit the yoke twice. 🤦♀️
For this design, Joji incorporates the yoke increases into a simple design element that she calls spine stitches. Essentially central double increases, these stitches create a wonderful line that moves down the fabric creating structure and balance with the lace panels. In typical stubborn me style, I did not take the time to watch the tutorial video that was oh so conveniently linked in the video. After a quick glance at the pictures I dove right in just went for it, because you can always drop down and fix mistakes right? Well, I did not end up with the lovely spine stitches as pictured in the pattern. Instead I ended up with a bunch of irregular floppy holes that I had no idea how to fix.
After a week or so in time out, I frogged the entire project, and then took the time to actually watch the video to learn how to create this stitch as it was intended. I am linking the recommended tutorial here for your convenience. Take the time to watch the video. It is much more clear than the pictures, and will ensure you have success on your first try. I chose to use Variation #1 to ensure there were no unsightly holes in my fabric for the second time.