DIY: Knit Gartrell Crew for Kenji by Tanis Lavallee

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I knit the Gartrell Crew by Tanis Lavallee for Kenji. Kenji has outgrown most of the sweaters I’ve knit him, so he’s getting a new one this winter!

The Gartrell Crew is a raglan-sleeved sweater knit in pieces and then seamed. I, like many knitters, prefer knitting in the round, so I was a bit hesitant to start this. However, the fact that the sweater is seamed allows you to play with stripes and colours. Some of the projects shown on Ravelry have matching stripes across the yoke of the sweater, but I liked Tanis’s version with mismatching stripes. The foldover ribbed crew neck is especially cozy. The front body piece has some neat neck shaping so that the crew neck has a slight dip at the throat. This ensures that the sweater is both beautiful and comfortable to wear.

The sweater pattern includes seventeen sizes, ranging from newborn to large adult with a 64″ chest. The Gartrell Crew pattern calls for 250 to 2100 yards of DK weight yarn, depending on which size you knit. Tanis’s pattern photos show optional stripes with mismatched, striped sleeves. Her sample really inspired me, so I decided to knit the sweater with mismatched stripes for Kenji.

I also had the perfect yarn: five colours of Koigu Kersti yarn, in red, black, yellow, blue, and green. I was able to use one skein of each colour for Kenji’s sweater, just running out of the black at the top of one sleeve. This yarn is a DK weight, 100% merino plied yarn in rich, saturated colours. The texture if almost like a chainette; as a result, the yarn is very smooth. It is very soft and suitable for a toddler to wear next to the skin. Even our mom, who is very sensitive to wool, found this super soft!

I used 2.5 mm and 3.0 mm needles and got gauge. I knit the size 2-4 years, as Kenji is almost 2 years old and I want him to be able to wear this sweater for at least another winter.

Kenji really loved the colours as I knit the sweater. He would grab a cake of wound yarn and carry it around. As a result, he loves to wear the sweater itself! As I was knitting it, however, I kept thinking that the colours of the stripes reminded me of something. Was it a flag, maybe? In the end, Tomiko and I realized the stripes almost match a furikake packet that we knew growing up! What do you think?

Tanis gives detailed instructions on how to do the math to get the right number of stripes and the right width depending on what you want. For Kenji’s sweater, I knit 10 stripes , each being 12 rows long. Once you finish knitting the pieces, you have to seam them using mattress stitch. I found seaming to be easy, as I was able to match up the stripes correctly.

Unfortunately, as you can see, I ran out of black yarn just as I neared the cap of the right sleeve. I had to improvise by knitting it as a half-depth stripe, then continuing with a half-depth yellow stripe, before finishing with a blue stripe. I had enough of the green yarn left to finish the sweater with the foldover crew neck. This nicely matches the green hem!

If you’ve got a lot of random colours of yarn hanging around, you can knit yourself a mismatched stripe version. I found switching colours to be really fun, so I definitely want to knit another Gartrell Crew for myself! Knitting the sweater itself was also really quick – I finished Kenji’s in less than three weeks! Now that I’m planning my own sweater, I even have all the yarn and colours selected from my stash and ready to go.

Get the Gartrell Crew pattern on Ravelry here. The pattern even comes in cardigan form, if that’s your preference.

Check out Kenji’s other sweaters here:

• Oliver Sweater by EweKnit Toronto
• Campfire Pullover by Tin Can Knits
• Marshmallow Baby Set by Lilia Vanini
• Teddy Bear Sweater and Free Pattern by Marta Porcel
• Binic Pullover and Free Pattern by Solenn Couix-Loarer
• Simple Baby Pullover and Free Pattern by Erica Kempf Broughton
• Remi Cardigan and Free Pattern by EweKnit Toronto