This sweater has a simple construction—modified drop shoulder with no shaping except for the sleeves. So what makes it Complex? There are five different panels of twisted-stitch motifs. Two are mirrored and the pattern repeats are 10 or 20 rows. The biggest issue is that the pieces are worked flat and this doubles the complexity. It may not sound all that complex, but since I knitted the sample myself, I can assure you this means the pattern is definitely complex. I ripped out the back twice, the front once, and the first sleeve three times. It is a good thing I selected the yarn I did as it tolerated this abuse beautifully. (More about that in my review in the Yarns We Love article.

Based on the mistakes I made while I knit this sweater, I have done two unusual things with the charts. I have simplified the chart symbols. The original ones were almost unreadable. I decided to give instructions in the Abbreviations section for how to interpret the symbol on the right-side and wrong-side rows. Another issue I encountered was that it was difficult to manage all five charts, so I have also included a set of charts which place the charts side by side. These charts do not include the filler stitches.

I couldn’t resist adding saddle shoulders to the sweater. There is just something about continuing a stitch pattern on the shoulders that I simply cannot resist.