Nov 1, 20193 min read

Making Zingiber Hoodie

Finally I can lift the lid on another secret project! Issue 2 of the Making Stories magazine came out this week. My contribution to the issue is Zingiber, a hooded cabled cardigan.

Zingiber :: a cabled cardigan knitting pattern

Making Stories strives to feature companies and makers who focus on sustainability, transparency, fairness and equity in their work. The magazine prides itself in inspiring crafters to make conscious and informed decisions about the materials they use and companies they support.

Working with Making Stories had a tremendous impact on my new-found appreciation for ethically and sustainably produced yarn, and they are the ones who gave me the impetus to start looking into the inherent problems in superwash wool and finding more environmentally-friendly alternatives for it.

Cable panel running down the middle back of the Zingiber hoodie

The theme in Issue 2 is Loving & Caring. Zingiber is a top-down raglan-sleeved cardigan hoodie with a wide four-leafed cable panel running down the back. The design was named after the Latin name for an entire family of plants that produces warming spices. The Zingiber genus includes such familiar winter spices as ginger, turmeric, and cardamom.

The worsted-weight yarn used in the pattern is Retrosaria Brusca, a wonderfully rustic, non-superwash mix of three Portuguese sheep breeds: Saloia, Merino Branco, and Merino Preto. It's certainly nothing alike any merino I've worked with before! It's bouncy and round in profile which makes it an excellent yarn for cabled projects. But the yarn is also grabby in a way that I'd imagine would make it perfect for colorwork items, too. Brusca comes in a range of wonderfully rich colors, and the color number 8C used in the pattern is just the right shade of warming rusty orange to suit the spicy theme.

The Zingiber hoodie was designed to be versatile, customizable, and to fit a variety of body types. The shape is unisex meaning there is no waist shaping in the pattern — this makes it easy to knit the cardigan as long as you like. If you're a bit more advanced knitter, you can easily add your own waist shaping.

There are a couple of other design features that you can either make or decide to leave off, whatever suits your style best. In Zingiber, I used the same short-row method to shape the hood as in Maypop Hoodie. But unlike in Maypop Hoodie which starts with the hood, in Zingiber stitches for the hood are picked up from the neckline and the hood is worked from the bottom up. This means that the hood is optional! If you don't want to make one, there are alternate instructions for button bands in the pattern: one that goes around the fronts as well as the hood, or one that goes around the neckline. (In my opinion, though, the hood is the best part.)

The cabled patch pockets are also optional and easy to leave out. Stitches for the pockets are picked last from above the ribbing, the patch pockets are worked bottom up and finally seamed in place. The same four-leafed motif that runs down the back of the cardigan is also featured on the pockets.

Making Stories is available as a physical, printed magazine from stockists worldwide and from Ravelry in digital format. Each printed magazine also includes a download code so you can save all patterns in your Ravelry library.

If you can't wait to get your hands on a copy, check out the giveaway on my Instagram account! Enter by Monday November 4 at the latest by answering this simple question: what is your favorite spice?

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