A smooshy, cably cardigan pattern from the Family Trunk Project - now available on Ravelry or over here.

Monami is the result of a thought experiment: an original design inspired by one of my favorite sweaters, Kim Hargreaves’s Breeze. I wanted to celebrate the role of inspiration in clothing design, since it’s an integral and valid part of the process that often gets dismissed as “copying.”

I didn’t consult Hargreaves’s pattern at any point during the design process, and my choices of yarn base, colorway, and cable motifs steered the final sweater in a markedly different direction from its original inspiration. More rustic and textural than its predecessor, Monami nonetheless owes a debt of gratitude to all the things I love about Breeze.

Other people who influenced the way this sweater turned out:

• knittermonkey Erin at Eat.Sleep.Knit helped me pick out the yarn;
• FoxInSocks Jodi at Green Ray Productions assisted with picking out the buttons;
• The famous Barbara Walker (and her contributors) gave me a starting-point for the cable motifs;
• Blog-reader platypus Natalie suggested the name, and introduced me to the awesome concept of monami waves.

You can read more in-depth about the design process over here.