A few weeks ago I was invited to a knitting evening hosted by Offset Warehouse. As well as selling sustainable fabrics (well as sustainable as they can be – it includes a lot of deadstock and organic fabrics), they run events promoting eco fashion etc.

This was their first foray into the knitting world, showcasing a new knitting pattern company Made + Worn with Erika Knight eco yarns.

Made + Worn differs from most knitting pattern companies as it’s an online system which calculates your pattern specific to your knitting tension and size requirements.

Considering that everything I’ve knitted so far always ends up an unexpected size, this really resonated with me!

We were given the Ada hat to try out. We first picked out our pattern texture – basically a process where you can choose what stitch you want your hat to be made up in – and style of ribbing. And after picking out a wool (I went for a grey nettle/cottton mix), we got knitting!

So the first part of any Made + Worn pattern is pretty dull. It requires knitting a pretty huge swatch which is then blocked and measured in order to generate your pattern.

Once the swatch is done the website takes you through the pattern row by row and saves your progress as you go. It’s a great way of keeping track of where you are as it’s essentially counting rows for you.

The downside? You never get to see the pattern as a whole and for me I find that that makes learning the stitch (so I can do it without instructions) impossible. It also limits you to only knitting whilst you have an internet connection so it’s not particularly useful on the tube which I found out!

To be honest if I was going to spend that much time knitting a swatch, I’d probably also be willing to spend the time calculating any sizing issues and adjusting any other pattern too. But I’m lazy and whilst I enjoy knitting I’m always acutely conscious of how much faster it would be if I’d sewn it instead…

And this is the finished result!

It’s a cute hat! I’ve totally sewn it up incorrectly but hopefully no one will notice the dodgy seam in the back.

Overall I really like the idea of the whole thing but I think the execution still needs a bit of work!