Bluebell Yarns had a sale. Bluebell yarns is run by talented indie dyer Becca, who makes some really lovely vibrant plain and variegated non-superwash, synthetic-free hand dyed yarns in small batches. Becca has found a new base for her chunky yarn so was selling the old base at a substantial discount, so of course I had to buy enough to knit a jacket. There was only a skein or two of any colorway, so I got a whole lot of different skeins in mixtures of blue and purple, sorted them in a kind of order, picked one color to go round the edges and knitted this jacket in alternating stripes of plain and variegated yarn.

Although this particular yarn is discontinued, the yarn that has replaced it is very similar, but less scratchy, as it is Bluefaced Leicester instead of Texel. You can find Bluebell yarns at www.bluebellyarns.co.uk. If you want to try dyeing your own, you can find a very similar yarn base at www.worldofwool.co.uk.

I then wanted to try a monochrome version, because perhaps I need a little sophistication in my life, but there was nothing in my sizeable and colourful stash in sufficient quantity, so I sent off for Cascade Yarns Ecological Wool – also described as a chunky yarn, but very different. I made this garment longer, adding 5 inches/13cm to the body length below the armholes.

Choose a yarn that has a wpi of around 7 which will give a gauge of around 13 sts per 10cm/4 inches in stockinette stitch.

The colored jacket has plain black buttons. The buttons on the monochrome jacket are individually hand made by McAnaraks in Scotland at www.mcanaraks.com and are washable.

This jacket is designed to fit loosely so that it can be worn over a thinner sweater as an extra layer. The textured stripe pattern is made by alternating stripes of main color and contrast color. The texture results from the use of tuck stitches on a base of garter stitch. A little saddle at the top of the raglan shaping gives a neat fit over the shoulders.

My jacket is made with buttons, but I think it would look equally good with a zip, or hooks and eyes to make an invisible fastening.