My black sheep sweater is done and I love it!

[u/nk033]

My black sheep sweater is done! Ironically made with Brown Sheep Company wool, haha (more on that later). Overall very happy with the result, my most professional-looking knit to date. I adapted the Diana Black Sheep hand knitting pattern to the machine, and I also studied the available photos from Princess Diana and her sweaters for construction and patterning. I did fair isle for the sheep with a punch card. The knitting part was stressful, and the back panel did fall off the machine once where I couldn't recover. Shaping of the front panel while doing fair isle was a breeze on the first side that I did, but the second side nearly fell off the machine, it was extremely stressful knowing I couldn't recover from the back falling off, and this was a nearly completed front! Fortunately it worked out.

I latched up the red floats after the fact, and duplicate stitched the black sheep and the eyes. Initially I was going to latch up the white floats, but that was pulling the fabric on the front too much (where the floats are relatively short), and the sheep actually benefited more from latching the red floats as that kept the white part from separating on the front where the two colors meet. Even with the latching up, the floats are pretty bad and they do catch when putting it on. This is the biggest construction issue. I would like to learn to make this with jacquard. I'm also not really happy with how thick the black sheep looks with the duplicate stitch. Does anyone know how the original was made? On photos, it looks like the black sheep is part of the original fabric, not duplicate stitch. Between the seaming (what a nightmare to seam fair isle edges by hand!!) and the duplicate stitching, the hand finishing felt like an insane amount of work, definitely more hours than the knitting. I would have made a few different design choices now that I see the final product, but that's fairly minor.

Now the yarn is the biggest disappointment. The worst issue with it is that the red color wasn't colorfast, and when I washed the whole sweater for blocking, it stained the beautiful white sheep. Now they are slightly pink, and not even uniform. With yarn coming on cones, it's not something I can prewash like a skein... ugh. This wasn't a major issue when blocking my swatch, probably because the size of it was much smaller and hence less red dye coming off. The other issues were the knots, which there were ~3 of. I caught and removed two of them, but one made it into the sweater without me noticing. There was also thickness variability and some random white thread in the red yarn (pictured)?? The yarn does have a very nice feel to it though. To be seen how it wears. From just knowing it's not colorfast, I would have chosen a different yarn. Having these issues is kind of disappointing for a premium-priced yarn.

[u/Donkey-Living]

It looks beautiful. I am so impressed. Thanks so much for the feedback on the yarn. I was about to buy that yarn myself since it is available in the usa on cones but it is really pretty pricey for that many knots and not being color fast. I guess I will keep winding sock yarn for now. Truly it is a work of art!

[u/nk033 → u/Donkey-Living]

Thank you! Yeah, the red yarn was disappointing (I have to say the white yarn didn't have those issues). They do have other shades of red, maybe those are more colorfast, I just don't know. I saw a hand-knitted project on Ravelry that used Harrisville Designs yarn, the color is very nice, and they sell cones. I used them for a different project - that yarn is very good quality, but it's Shetland style, which feels a bit crunchy. It's also a bit thicker than the one I had from Brown Sheep. I also heard negative reviews about KnitPicks palette, which is another option for cones (that one has issues with pilling, supposedly). I don't know what else is left to try other than winding up skeins for hand knitting! If I do it again, I might go with Harrisville.

[u/Impossible-Ranger-74]

Thank you for the account! The sweater is on my wishlist and knowing about the pitfalls helps a lot. Gorgeous!

[u/nk033 → u/Impossible-Ranger-74]

Awesome, thank you! I recommend it, it's not that difficult. I think I was stressed because I'm not very experienced, but I think overall it's not that difficult for someone with experience.

[u/SubtleCow]

Dude, I watch your YouTube channel religiously. It is neat seeing Knit Factory Impl in the wild.

Man June 2025 feels like forever ago.

[u/nk033 → u/SubtleCow]

This is NOT Knit Factory Impl! I did watch her video for inspiration, but I didn't use any of her worksheets (which she didn't make available anyway as far as I'm aware), and I made a variety of other design and construction choices. Her video is great though, I really enjoyed it!

[u/scrippacrab]

Wow, fantastic work! This is gorgeous. Can I ask what you mean by latched up after the fact? I'm new to more intricate fair isle patterns on my machine and I'm struggling with terribly long floats. I tried latching floats after the row was knitted, but they are popping through the front...

[u/nk033 → u/scrippacrab]

Thank you! Yes, of course - what I mean is that I didn't do any float management while knitting (maybe there's a smart way to do it, but I haven't figured it out), and I latched them up with the latch tool after the panels were off the machine. I just twisted the bottom float to form a loop and then pulled through all the floats above to form a column, just like you'd be picking up dropped stitches in hand knitting. To keep the top loop from slipping, I first placed it on a safety pin and then I threaded the black yarn through it and attached to one of the loops below to secure it.

[u/scrippacrab → u/nk033]

Thank you! I’m going to try that on one of my swatches 🤞for whatever reason, I thought the only answer was getting a color changer to do double bed jacquard.

[u/nk033 → u/scrippacrab]

You can definitely make it with plain fair isle! This is how the original was made in the 80s (if you search for the Sotheby's listing for Diana's sweater, you can see the floats inside the neck on one of the pictures), I just don't know how they did the black sheep exactly. That said, I do think the sweater would really benefit from DBJ. I bought the color changer, but still haven't figured out how to use it...

[u/Mysterious-Class-474]

YAY! Looks like a fun sweater to knit and wear.

[u/Worried_System375]

i'm obsessed, should i sell patterns or kits?

[u/East-Flower-5114]

it’s beautiful. By the way, I have a lot of stains of black sheep wall that I’d like to sell cheap. if you’d like it, look me up on Facebook.. Jane Harland. There’s a drawing of me.

[u/East-Flower-5114]

I have a lot of skeins of Black Sheep wool. They’re about 40 years old and have been well kept in sealed plastic bags. In non-smoking home. None of these will colours have ever run. Jane

[u/Holiday_Hyena_7440]

So fun, I love it!

[u/dayglo1]

Beautiful!

[u/Stellar-Drift]

So jelly! I've always wanted one of these. Stunning!

[u/drabelull]

So cute :)

[u/Automatic-Mirror-907]

I am a long time knitter and always loved this design. I made a sweater of a bricks, like a brick wall with black as the color of the mortar. I left one brick out in the front to sort of replicate the idea of the black sheep sweater. I called it my missing brick sweater. No machine though.

[u/ichibanyogi]

Sweater looks wonderful!! <3

Really helpful knowledge about that yarn! I'm doing courses via The Knitting School Online and they recommend that yarn. I was thinking about putting in an order, but now I'm going to stay away from it. Thank you for saving me!