The Elsebeth Lavold book that has Blossom, my very first sweater, also has Happy, and for the longest time it was on my mental list of things I had to knit. What I loved most about it was the unusual color pattern; the three-against-two arrangement of the stripes does a brilliant job of mixing up the colors without making the sweater seem like a chaotic mess. So I had Happy in the back of my mind for about a year, but the colors of Silky Wool in stock at Crazy for Ewe never leapt out at me.

Then one Saturday in July, I walked into the shop to do some knitting, and the first thing I saw was a massive heap of Silky Wool piled on one long side of the table. A new shipment had just arrived, and I figured that if I was ever going to find five colors that sang to me, it would be now. So I started arranging colors on the table, and after a couple of hours (with lots of time actually knitting my current project), I walked out with these five.

Given the color choices available, it didn’t make sense to do a light/dark division as Lavold did in the original pattern, so instead I chose two neutrals and three colors. The two browns were the obvious choice for the neutrals, but the colors were a bit more challenging. I laid out a set of browns and three purples, and a set of browns and three greens, and they were both nice but kind of lacking oomph. Then Ellen slid out one of the purples and replaced it with the darkest green, and everyone agreed that we had a winner.

Having already knit a striped sweater in Silky Wool with a similar construction, I was a little suspicious of the pattern’s making the sleeves longer than the body. In my other striped sweater, which is not particularly long, the sleeves start exactly at the same place as the bottom of the sweater, and I wear it with the bottom of the sleeves rolled over so the cuffs sit at my wrists. As it happened, I saw a Knitting Daily blog post about shortening a garment knit from the bottom up right before I started knitting Happy, so I ignored my nagging doubts and knit the sleeves as written secure in the knowledge that I could fix them if need be. Of course, I had to fix them. Cutting the yarn and pulling off the original cuffs was nerve-wracking, but it was nice to practice a new garment-fixing technique. On the plus side, removing the extra two stripes made my sleeves follow the color pattern for the rest of the sweater instead of repeating the cuff color on the second stripe.

Speaking of practicing new techniques, I followed Lavold’s advice and learned to weave in the ends as I went. BEST TRICK EVER.

Although Happy is designed to hang loosely and I did make it with positive ease, I added a teeny bit of waist shaping.

I love love love the texture of this sweater. The garter ridges between the stripes really make them pop, and the textural elements in the middle of the stripes are subtle but striking.