Gothic skull motifs mohair jumper with pixie hood and thumb holes

This is an achevement and a long awaited challenge. I actually saved the large skull chart years ago. I think probably about 2009 from here.

http://www.domiknitrix.com/knittingpatterns/skullpattern.cfm

I always meant to get round to this but its taken a long while. At the time I printed this out I had no yarn and had not knitted in years. It was just a dream. A wish.

Fast forward to 2020 and I am knitting again and every time I start a new jumper I think of it but decide to wait. Its got to be in stocking stitch which I find boring so I wait. Also I start to see stripes around the skull so I need oddments rather than waste a jumpers worth of yarn on something that can be made from left overs. And what colour to use?

The black is left over from my holey punk jumper.

The bright purple with glitter I bought at the same time as the black yarn and from the same Ebay seller. But I had only a few 50g balls. The purple without glitter is one of the shades of purple odd bits left over from my recent purple aran. And so this started to come together.

Then here are also rows of plain black without glitter of various different makes.

And the pale pink? Well why did I even buy such a colour. Its really not me, but as skulls..... maybe!

But then I am on Ravelry and looking around at skulls and seeing a lovely free skull motive given as part of a mitt pattern here:

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/skull-biking-mitts

 I did the skulls round the bottom edge front and back using the mitts free chart BUT note however that the chart knits these over 1 row for each row of the chart. To make them bigger I did 2 rows so one knit row and a purl return row for every single charted row. So hopefully this will make sense: row 1 was the first row of the chart, row two was the first row of the chart but the return row. These have a plain black glitter background.

I wanted to include my mitts was a long wrist with thumb holes. I do not know why I never thought to knit thumb jumpers before but never did. 

This is striped on the thumb hole/mitt area. I crocheted around each hole at the very end after sewing together. 

On the wrists I did the same chart but using the correct 1 row of every chart row so row 1 was knit row 2 was purl etc. This made the skulls half the size of those round the hem.

Then I used the dominitrix chart for the big skull. This has just black and black glitter but it all seems to look like black with glitter even though some rows are non-glittery. I made a few mistakes here. Should have used row counters. I got lost. Some sides do not match up to the rows in the chart but it seems to look ok despite this. 

For the hood I copied my ancient and now very worn pixie top. 

 

This green jumper has odd patterned sleeves. It used to be my trademark but I have not done that recently.

The actual detailed pattern for the skull jumper is below if you want it but you will need to download from the links to the charts for the skull motifs.

So this was not knitted quite like anything else I have knitted ever.

 But it has worked!

I was very unsure about yarn quantities so I knitted the ribbing for the back and then the skulls motifs then I stopped and knitted the ribbing and skulls for the front.

About now I realised its gong to be too large. But then I always wanted to make a sweater dress. Normally, the idea would have daunted me but I am really getting into this now so deliberately decide to go ahead. I could have just stopped with the border skulls and made a second jumper with the larger skull but decided this is going to be my ultimate skully dress. With thumbs!

From here on I knitted say 20 rows of front and 20 rows of back. I carried the different yarns up the sides. When I got to the large skull I had at one point 14 small balls of yarn attached and it was diffcult to knit this. Constant tangles and moving around of balls of yarn which were all around my chair. This way of working out what to do meant I would not run out of yarn in any one colour because I could always for example sudenly introduce a completely different colour like maybe blue if I had to to make it work and ran out of yarn. As it turns out I had enough just of purple and black. It also had a distinct advantage for me in that I was not bored with stocking stitch. This boredom has halted many a jumper over the years. I like to wear quite boring basic knits but have to knit lace or cables or colour work like intarsia or fairisle for interest.

Onward it moved - quite fast really. I did the large dominitrix skull and that took ages but when I was getting a bit tired - I knit at night after work so this is a problem- I just swapped to the plain stocking stitch stripes for a few rows instead of the more difficult intarsia. This meant I did not end up doing large area of boring stripes which would have slowed me down.

I then did the sleeves and finally the hood. This is a copy of the hood I knitted years ago and I can only tell you how I knitted this because there never was a pattern. Or its my own pattern. I just originally made it up and it worked. Now I counted stitches and copied the older jumper. 

One problem here. I actually should have made the hood bigger because the neck is slightly larger/ wider on this jumper than the original green jumper and the hood does not go all the way round. It actually doesn't matter but is not quite as I designed this. If you decide to follow the below pattern you may want to add another 6 stitches to the hood.

So finally I have all my completed bits but its the middle of winter and far too dark under electric lighting to sew it together. It took me several days and I decided to start work late one day ( I do flexi-time so can start between 07:30 and 10:00 but usually prefer to work earlier and finish earlier) to get the shoulders sewn up one morning in daylight. You need to sew up the two shoulder seams and sew the hood together with a CB seam.

Then a Saturday morning to get the hood onto the neck. Well I did this like my old green jumper. I do not know if the technique I use even exists or has an actual name but I basically pickup round the neck of the jumper. Then on seperate needles pick up the edge of the hood. 

Explanation: I use several different circular needles - normally I hate the things but they are amazing for this.

In the below photo the hood is at the top, jumper at bottom and I have picked up the edge of both (as in pick up a stitch, and leave on needle then repeat to end) but not knitted anything as yet just picked up. Its not how I normally pick up and knit but this is a killer to do believe me.

 Note: I use similar sized needles to do this because I do not have 4 or 5 the same size. It did not seem to matter because the pick up stitches row is not the row you are knitting from really its just where you join the two parts together.

Then I get my parter to take the photos because I pick up both together. I really tried to get some decent photos of this but couldn't.

 I position the hood so its next to the neck stitches and pick up off one then the other. This does take a bit of fiddling and I redid one side which was a pain but eventually this worked and I can then knit the ribbed edge.

You need to find the CB of the jumper neck. CB of the hood is the bit you have seamed together up the back. I used another circular needle to hold the parts together but this did not work so abandoned that and just held them in line and kept counting because there are more neck edge stitches than hood edge stitches so you knit 1 to 2 of the neck between the hood edge.

 

Below you can see the hood is outside the neck of the jumper and both parts are hed in the hand at once and I am knitting one stitch from the hood then 1-2 stitches from the neck of the jumper. Its a tricky one and I dropped stitches and had to pick up a few times.

 

I hope the photos help. Not sure they do and I really do not know how to draw this and I have never yet made a video to show you. I am not primarily a knitter either so could be there is a name for the above technique. I have never seen it in a book though but it has worked very well doing this on my old green jumper which is now about 12 years old and has never come appart so I think this will stand the test of time as well.

As you can see the old green jumper has the ribbing on the outside the new purple one its on the inside. Its an accident and I do not have a preference so you could do it either way.

Then finally sew sleeves in and sew up side seams. Here I had a small issue in that I carried my threads up the sides meaing one side was tighter than the other so I had to very carefully to match the stripes and adjust to make this work. I must have pulled the carried threads a bit too much. I am a pretty loose knitter....or so myMum whois a very tight knitter has told me!

Well if you would like to knit this, here is my pattern and you could of course just make this as a plain hoody thumbs jumper without the skulls or use butterflys or whatever motifs you fancied:

 You need to use a yarn meant for 5-6.5mm needles for this. I used a variety of mohairs but you could use chunky or even two strands of double knit knitted together to give you Chunky weight. When I was a kid Chunky was called Double Double knitting wool because that is exactly what it is. If you do this though be careful to knit both strands because its easy to drop half of one stitch when doubling yarn. I assume this is knitted in mohair but please adjust for whatever you are using.

Back ( Front identical except for neck shaping)

With 5.5mm needles, cast on 76 stitches using two strands of mohair yarn together. I used an aran cast on because its less likely to go out of shape but it will not really matter what method you use. I cast on in black.

Add the next colour, break off one of the black strands because you will knit the rest of the back in single yarn. I did double rib so k2, p2, k2, p2 to end then on the reverse row p2, k2, p2 ,k2 etc. 

I did  4 rows of purple and two rows of black then 4 rows of purple - this is my "mitts" and then changed to 6.5mm needles. 

Using black for the next row I knitted a row increasing one stitch at each end to give me 78 stitches. 

From here I do 2 row stripes in each colour from now on 

 2 rows black, (knit one row and then purl one row)

2 rows purple,

2 rows black,

2 rows purple,

2 rows black,

Now to set the pattern for the first row of the motifs. 

For the size I made I have 5 medium skull motifs. The chart from the free mitts pattern gives a chart that is 12 stitches wide by 12 rows high. I made this 12 stitches wide by 24 rows high by doing a reverse row on each purl row the same as the knit row.  

if I have 5 motifs I can do 3 black st, 12 pink stitchs 3 black etc

However the skull motif is NOT all 12 stitches wide so this took some working out ( and I unpicked twice!).

Looking at the chart you have 3st back ground, 6 skull and 3 back ground but you also need some in betwen for when you have the full 12 st width. So 

3 -3-6 -3-3-3-6-3-3 etc

3 = background st

 3 = background but part of the chart

You need to carry the yarn across the back and eventually will need lots of small balls of pink and (after the first purple row) black yarns and it gets very messy so you need to keep untangling all the small balls of yarn. Try to remember to twist each change of colour yarn together to stop holes when its worn. You can strand accross the back for up to 3 stitches but otherwise use a separate ball of yarn and twist together when it meets the next ball of yarn:

knit 3st  purple, 6 st pink, 9 st purple, 6st pink, 9 st purple, 6st pink, 9 st purple, 6st pink, 9 st purple, 6st pink, 3st purple.

Now do a return row in purl. Break off purple yarn and from here continue in stocking stitch using just pink for the skulls and black for the background. Follow the chart remember for each chart row I did 2 rows of knitting on the bottom hem of the jumper.

Once I have finished the skull motifs I do two rows of black and then join the purple again and revert to alternating of two rows purple, 2 rows black , 2 rows purple ###

### BACK 

For the back this equates to 24 purple rows then I end with a two rows of black .

Back neck cast off 20 stitches, put 36 on a needle holder, cast off 20 stitches - NOTE you might want to reduce this since my neck hole is quite wide!

### FRONT 

Front: after doing the skull motif change to purple yarn.

So: skull motif is 46 st wide and 75 rows high and I did each row as 1 row so never repeated the rows like I did with the small motif.

Each side then has 16 back ground st plus the chart. I did all the centre bits of the skull - eyes etc in black even though I have stripes around it. This makes for more small balls of yarn to get tangled. You need to regularly stop to untangle the balls and sort this out but as you go along you get less small balls and it gets easier. I took lots of breaks and knitted the plain stripey back when it got annoying which made for a much better overall knitting experience. I actually finished the back and front same day due to this which was really nice.

1st row set the pattern:16 purple, 21 purple ( chart background), 2 pink, 22 purple( chart background),16 purple. continue to follow the chart. I went wrong several times and my right side skull does not match up with left side of skull on chart. I have read about others doing this mistake. It does not seem to matter because it still looks ace anyway. At the top of skull I ended with purple but that depends on how you do this because you could have more colours. 

 Also as already explained, I did two different purples so eg 2 purple, 2 black, 2 purple, 2 black, 2 dark purple, 2 black and I added in some not glittery black as well but just made sure the front and back matched. Knitting both front and back together really helped with this. It meat that when you are not too sure you have enough yarn you can make quite sure exactly how much you need and what to adjust or if to add in another colour. I also realised it would not matter if the sleeves have a slightly differnt pattern to the body ( or even to each other if necessary) but as it happened I had more than enough yarn to do this without needing any more colours.

So after I have done my top 2 rows purple at the top of the skull  I do 2 rows black then shape neck:

knit 30st put centre 18 stitches on stitch holder, turn and purl backwards. Then on the purl row cast off 2st at neck edge every purl row until there are 20 stitches left you should have stripes that evenly match the back ( unless I have miscalculated here!)

Repeat for other shoulder.

SLEEVES:  I cast on 28st using 5.5mm needles, rib enough to take the mitts to the cuff. For me this was 2 rows black, 4 rows purple, 2 rows black, 4 rows purple, 2 rows black of double ribbing. Then change to 6.5mm needles and continue in stocking stitch in narrower stripes of 2 rows at a time of black and purple.  I did 2 rows purple, 2 black, 2 purple, 2 black then 4 rows of purple. Then I change tp black glitter and start the skull motif. This wrist motif is exactly as the biker mitts pattern and has a different set of stitches for every row. 

I finish off with 2 rows of black after the skull then start my stripes pattern. 

 To shape the sleeve I increaseone stitch at each end of few rows until I get to 56 stitches. Note that I increase around every 6th row.

I do 27 stripes alternating the colours and taking the extra yarn up the side. I twist the extra strands of yarn at the strat of every stitch. Because I have 4 types of yarn this makes for a slightly thicker edge on one side. This does not matter once sewn up. Cast off using 7mm needle to keep the edge stretchy.

HOOD: Cast on 90 stitches using 5.5mm needles and doubled yarn in black. Change to purple yarn and double ribb 6 rows ( I could have made this a bit wider to go all round the neck edge so up to you if you want say an extra 10 stitches.  Change to 6.5mm needles. Stocking stitch in stripe pattern for 38 rows or until the hood measures 29cm in length.

Now to shape the hood: start to decrease both ends of every row until there are 6 stitches remaining,  continur in stocking stitch stripe pattern for 14 more rows, decreass to 4 stitches, stocking stitch 4 rows and decrease to 2 stitches and cast off. 

 Then sew up : shoulders first, then pick up round neck/ hood as detailed above. Once the neck is knitted in ribbing - 86 stitches in double ribbing in black glitter mohair. 

Carefully sew up the side seams matching the stripes. Sew up sleeves leaving thumb holes open.

Then finally to finish off the thumbholes in the mitts and to ensure this does not wear out too fast I crocheted around the thumbholes. 

I hope this makes sense but if you do tryto make something similar and find and error in this please do get in touch and I will try to work out what is wrong and correct it. I am intending to knit another one of these though not with skulls because I need a jumper as well and I have lived in my green one so it needs replacing. I am not yet exactly sure what its going to look like but it will not be green and it will not have skulls on it ( probably!)

And today we got news of the end of Lockdown. Its not for a while as yet but I cannot wait. Incidentlayy its not snowy here now but its taken me ages to write out the pattern for this - for my own future use as well as the world's so this will go live on what is a nice sunny spring day in February. But never mind. Its a knitting achievement for me and I am already loving this make.

Take care, stay safe

Bracken