I made an Ugly Christmas sweater that glows in the dark

“Ugly” is a state of mind.

I feel like most knitwear designs are born from a gap in the market. For me, that gap was a sweater that looked like it had Christmas lights wrapped around it.

There was a time when I had a fast-fashion “ugly” Christmas sweater from Urban Planet. It featured Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on the front and had working fairy lights embedded in it. The wires and battery pack were sewn in place, making the sweater impossible to clean beyond spot treatment. I eventually donated it, as the fear of getting it dirty outweighed its whimsy.

Fast forward some years later, as I delved deeper into the world of knitting, I began having visions of a similarly festive design. One that would be both practical and novel in concept. For the past year or so I’ve been collecting supplies, hoarding glow-in-the-dark and blacklight-reactive yarns until I could realize my vision.

I wanted to find a stitch technique that would look like a slowly slanting cable, but that only used one or two stitches so it would appear thin — like the braid in a string of Christmas lights. But for the life of me, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I wanted something that looked almost like brioche knitting, but diagonal instead of straight.

I was perusing hat patterns one day when it hit me like a bolt of lightning. The Left Twist (LT) stitch was the one I was looking for!

To test my hypothesis, as well as the novelty yarns I collected, I knit a swatch using Cascade 220, a worsted-weight Peruvian Highland wool, in the shade “Hunter Green” for the body, a random black acrylic worsted yarn for the cable, and a ball of “Amigurumi Glow” yarn by Circulo for the glowing bobbles.

For this first prototype, I decided to knit the sweater flat in pieces, as I thought it would be easier than trying to do the math for a sweater in the round. I used a free pattern generator, Knit Anything, to give me a jumping-off point.

From the basic schematic Knit Anything generated for me, I made a few modifications right out of the gate. Instead of casting off the shoulders completely on the front and back and seaming the whole thing together, I did a three-needle bind-off to graft the pieces together at the shoulders, so I would only have to seam the sides of the sweater. Then instead of knitting the sleeves flat separately, I knit them in the round by picking up stitches along the armholes in the body.

The concept was to have the twists and bobbles climbing in staggered rows across the front of the sweater, and winding around each sleeve. These stitch motifs made the hours fly by as the string lights began to take shape.

It was when I got to the back panel that I remembered how boring plain stockinette knitting can be, with no fancy stitches or colourwork to break the monotony. I wanted to leave the back plain, though, as I figured that having a bunch of bobbles on my back would make sitting uncomfortable. I made my bed, so I had to knit in it.

In all, I am very happy with how my first attempt at design turned out. Even if I didn’t finish it before Christmas, I am sure it’ll be in regular rotation to bring some much-needed glow to the post-holiday winter gloom.