I didn’t share a WIP Wednesday post last week because I was busy with Wedding Cake Week: Season 2, so this post will be covering weeks 4 & 5 of making my Porcelain Sweater (pattern by LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe), using the 2025 Bridgerton Advent from Castle View Yarns as the contrast colour(s). 

Progress

I definitely feel like my progress has slowed down a bit— the more excited I get to finish this project, the slower I seem to knit!

In the fourth and fifth weeks of knitting, I have…

• Finished the 1×1 rib section on the body
• Cast off!

In my defence, I spent most of the first week making another wedding cake, so I only managed to knit about 6 rows that week— most of this progress took place in the second week (Week 5).

Also: now the ribbing is done, you can finally see the third colourwork band in all its glory! Wahoo!

Mid-Knit Thoughts & Musings

My goodness… I forgot how interminable 1×1 rib feels!

There’s a pretty hefty chunk of rib at the base of the body and, honestly, I didn’t love working it. The stitches were flying off my needles while I was doing the stockinette/colourwork sections, but I really had to dig deep to get the ribbed section finished.

In fairness to 1×1 rib, white it is usually slower than regular stockinette, there were a couple of extra things slowing me down this time around…

Firstly, for most of the ribbing, I was using a circular needle with ever-so-slightly too long a cable, so I was kind of yanking the work around the needles a lot. I knew this was happening, but I couldn’t believe it was enough to slow me down quite that significantly, so I stuck with it for about 3/4 of the ribbing… big mistake! Eventually, I made the swap to the shorter needles and… it was a lot quicker. I could have saved myself a lot of time if I’d done that earlier.

Secondly, I wanted my ribbing to be really neat, so I opted to use a technique I’ve been trying out recently where you knit the knit stitches normally (for me, that means English-style, or ‘throwing’) and purl the purls continentally (also known as ‘picking’). This can help tighten up the ribbing, which makes it look neater.

I actually really like this as a technique and have been doing it for most of my ribbing recently, but it does make the process take longer because you have to keep changing the direction of the yarn (and you have to remember to purl into the back of the purl stitches, because the continental method reverses their position on the needles!).

All-in-all, 1×1 rib is super slow, but I managed to make it even slower for myself. I’m just a glutton for punishment, I suppose.

After the ribbing, the pattern suggests using a tubular bind-off. I have done this technique before, with my Braidy Loop Sweater, but I didn’t love it: it felt like a lot of work, involved grafting with a very long piece of yarn and I think it has quite a tight, firm feel to it that isn’t my favourite.

Instead, I used HiyaHiya Grandma’s Stretchy Bind Off, where you purl the knit stitches and knit the purl stitches, always moving the working yarn behind the stitches as you work them, then pass the initial stitch over the second stitch. You can see the technique in action in this YouTube video by Carrie Ramirez (in the video, this technique is used for 2×2 rib, but it works for any ribbed pattern).

This bind off still has its own faffs (mainly the constant slipping of stitches back and forth to get the working yarn in the right position), but it doesn’t require any setup rows, it’s not a sewn cast off (so no trying to manage ridiculously long lengths of yarn!) and it has a soft, even feel and neat appearance, so I still think it’s preferable to a tubular bind-off!

Final Thoughts

Essentially, the ribbed section at the bottom of this sweater took me 2 whole weeks to finish (though, as I mentioned, there was a wedding cake-shaped distraction in that first week!). I didn’t really enjoy this stage of the process, because it just felt so endless and a little bit foreign to my fingers after all of that dreamy stockinette.

Nevertheless, it is done! Now I can move on to making this sweater body into an actual sweater: just the neck and sleeves to go!

If you're interested...

You can purchase the Porcelain Sweater pattern by LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe on Ravelry here.

You can find the Ravelry project page for my Porcelain Sweater here.

You can check out Castle View Yarns here.

My current project is still my Porcelain Sweater (pattern by LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe), made using the 2025 Bridgerton Advent from Castle View Yarns as the contrast colour(s). 

Three weeks into the knitting process and progress has been made: I’ve officially finished all of the colourwork on the body and knitted with all 24 of the Advent yarns. It’s very exciting seeing the majority of the body made and I’m absolutely loving how this project is looking so far!

Progress

In the first two weeks of working on this project, I worked all the way up to the end of the second band of colourwork, which I think is pretty speedy)!

The third week involved very straightforward knitting: no shaping, just a big chunk of plain stockinette and another band of colourwork, using the remaining 9 shades of the Advent yarns.

In the third week of knitting then, I finished…

• The 2nd band of plain stockinette
• The 3rd and final colourwork band!

My progress has slowed a little bit, because I’ve had a super busy month or so (more on that in due course… stay tuned!), but I’m so pleased to have finished the colourwork bands on the body— it’s lovely to see all of the colours together and have something that actually (kind of) resembles a sweater on my needles!

Mid-Knit Thoughts & Musings

The rows of plain stockinette are deliciously repetitive and comforting in their boringness: just what I need after the intense colourwork of each patterned band!

My row gauge is a little off, so I ended up working 24 rows for each of the plain stockinette sections (6 more than the pattern calls for). Will I run out of the DROPS yarn? That remains to be seen…

The third colourwork band was much more straightforward than the second: no float-carrying, no increasing/decreasing for certain sections, just pure, simple colourwork. Much more enjoyable (and much neater on the wrong side!).

I worked 6 rows of plain stockinette after the third band, switching to 3mm needles for the 6th and final row to prepare for the big stretch of 1×1 rib that is to come…

I’ve now used each of the 24 yarns in the Bridgerton Advent collection, so I can really see the gradient— it’s looking just how I pictured it would, which makes me so happy.

I do have more colourwork to do, because the second and third bands are repeated on the sleeves, so I’m not done with my contrast yarns yet. First, though, a lot of rib…

Castle View Yarns 2025 Bridgerton Advent: Shades 8-1

In the first band, I used shades 24-17 of the 2025 Bridgerton Advent gradient from Castle View Yarns, while in the second band I used shades 17-9. In the previous two posts on this project, I went through those yarns shade-by-shade, showing off the colours and contemplating their individual inspirations from the show (you can find my musings on shades 24-17 here, and on 16-9 here).

Now, it’s time to talk about shades 8-1! The first row of this colourwork band was knitted with shade 9, just to help the gradient flow through the sweater, but, seeing as I already talked about shade 9 last week, I’ll skip that one here.

Just like before, here are the shades, their names and my ✨educated guesses✨ of their inspirations from the show!

8: ‘One Always Has Worth’

This teal shade is named after a quote by Penelope, from her big speech in the Season 3 finale. In the scene, she wears a dress in a very similar shade, so I’m pretty sure that that’s the inspiration behind this yarn!

7: ‘Wallflower’

This green shade is one of the strongest and most vibrant colours in the whole collection: so much so that, when I first used it in my colourwork swatch, I actually considered leaving it out of the sweater, because I was worried that it might overpower the other shades!

However, once I’d finished the swatch completely, I realised that, despite being a strong shade, it did fit nicely in with the other shades so I decided to stick to my original plan and leave it in. I did, however, adjust my distribution of the 3-row shades within the colourwork, so that this shade was only used for 2 rows in the pattern, just to make sure it wasn’t too overpowering. The name of this shade must be a reference to the iconic dark green dress that Bridgerton’s resident ‘wallflower’ Penelope Featherington wears to Lady Danbury’s Four Seasons Ball in the first episode of Season 3!

6: ‘But You’re My Mess’

This aqua shade is named after a quote said by Colin Bridgerton to Penelope Featherington in Season 3 (we’re pretty heavy on the Season 3 inspirations in this section!). Both Colin and Penelope are… unclothed… when the quote is spoken, and the set is mostly dark blues and golds, so I think this shade is supposed to represent their relationship as a whole, rather than that particular scene. The greeny-blue hue is frequently associated with this couple throughout the series, as it’s supposed to reflect the merging of the Bridgerton family (who are typically represented by the colour blue) and the Featherington family (who are typically represented by the colour yellow), so this shade feels very fitting.

5: ‘Aubrey Hall’

Aubrey Hall is the Bridgerton family’s country residence. It features most prominently in Season 2, when Anthony, the eldest Bridgerton son, invites the Sharma family to stay there with his family, ahead of a large ball they are hosting. I think this green shade pays homage to the huge, perfectly manicured lawn of the residence, where the Bridgerton family engage in their cutthroat games of Pall Mall.

4: ‘We Shall Promenade’

The name of this pale green shade does sound like it references a particular quote from the series, but I just can’t seem to place it! There are a lot of promenading scenes throughout the series though, so I do think it needed a reference! The yarn is such a pretty shade too: pale green with little flickers of turquoise and specks of golden yellow.

3: ‘My Purpose Shall Set Me Free’

Another Penelope quote! This one is from Season 2, when Penelope and Colin are talking about Colin’s existential crisis… I think this yellow-green shade perfectly encapsulates the green grass in the grounds around the palace, the yellow of Penelope’s dress and the golden sunlight that shines down on the two characters in the scene.

2: ‘Flawless, My Dear’

This shade is named after a quote said by Queen Charlotte in the first episode of the first season, during Daphne’s debut (how far we’ve come!). This pale gold, champagne-y shade pays tribute to Daphne’s white-and-gold debutante attire, as well as the pearls (and other assorted finery) worn by the Queen.

1: ‘Lustre & Glitter & Gold’

This golden shade is named after a quote by Portia Featherington, said while informing her housekeeper, Varley, on her desired theme for the extravagant ball she plans to throw to celebrate the family’s new (sketchily-acquired) wealth. This yarn is, undoubtedly, aptly named!

Final Thoughts

And that is how Week 3 of working on my Porcelain Sweater x Bridgerton Advent project went! Even though I had a little less time to knit this week, I’m still loving working on this project and it was particularly exciting to see all of the finished colourwork bands together, with the whole gradient of colours running through them!

If you're interested...

You can purchase the Porcelain Sweater pattern by LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe on Ravelry here.

You can find the Ravelry project page for my Porcelain Sweater here.

You can check out Castle View Yarns here.

Gemma

xxx

I’m still working on my Porcelain Sweater (pattern by LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe), with the 2025 Bridgerton Advent from Castle View Yarns as the contrast colour(s).

I’m not a super speedy knitter (your girl has cakes to bake), but I felt like I got quite a lot of knitting done in the first week of making this project! The second week involved less shaping than the first, but just as much colourwork (in the round, this time, thank goodness) and I think I got a pretty good chunk of knitting done!

Progress

After the first week of knitting, I had worked the top of the back section (including the first band of colourwork), as well as both shoulders. I’d also knitted the first handful of rows after joining the right and left shoulders across the front.

In the second week of knitting, I finished…

• The top part of the front section (including the other half of the first colourwork band)
• Lots of plain stockinette rows in the DROPS yarn
• Joining the front and back together to start working the body in the round
• The second band of colourwork

So, a lot of colourwork this week, paired with a big stretch of stockinette!

Mid-Knit Thoughts & Musings

I am so relieved to be working in the round now— I’m a super slow purl-er and… knitting colourwork flat? It’s not for the weak. I’ve continued my gradient of the 2025 Bridgerton Advent colours into the second band of the sweater, so I’ve gone through the purples and dipped into the blues towards the end.

The second band of colourwork is definitely more complex than the first: not only is the repeat larger (and a little less intuitive to follow), you also need to increase and decrease the stitch count around the middle leaf design to make it work.

On some of the rows of the leaf design, I did need to carry the floats by twisting the yarns at the back of the fabric, which was a bummer, because I thought I had moved past all that float-carrying business once I switched to working in the round, but alas, the distance between the contrast stitches on some rows was just too great.

I think the aforementioned float-carrying and relative complexity of this band definitely meant that my work isn’t quite as neat as the first band, but I’m hoping that it will kind of… smooth itself out once I block it? Fingers crossed!

I did make one slight adaptation when it came to increasing the stitch count for the leaf motif. For my size, I needed to increase my stitch count by 6 stitches, so I placed 6 stitch markers around my work, evenly spaced, so I would know where to work them. I was supposed to increase on Row 8, but I ended up working my increase row on Row 9, instead.

I wanted my increases to be as invisible as possible, so I tried a few different types of increase (k2tog, M1L, LLI etc.) and I found that the k2tog made a visible ‘purl’ bump, so I opted to use a lifted increase. However that meant that if the stitch being lifted was a different colour (i.e. if I was lifting a stitch from the contrast colour row), the increase not only stood out more, but it also threw off the seamlessness of the colourwork. Shifting the increases to the Row 9 meant I could work M1Ls pretty seamlessly, knitting cream stitches on top of cream stitches, without distorting any of the colourwork (LLI lifts the stitch from two rows below, so I couldn’t use that one!). I suppose I could have done M1R, but I do not particularly enjoy working M1Rs so… M1L it is!

I worked my increases and decreases as close to my original 6 stitch markers as possible, but I prioritised making sure that they were well within the chunks of cream stitches (i.e. not too close to any of the contrast colour stitches), to minimise any distortion of the colourwork. I know this all sounds a bit… over the top, but I think it makes a big difference and I’m really pleased I took the extra time to think about it— it made me feel very professional!

Castle View Yarns 2025 Bridgerton Advent: Shades 16-9

I’m working through the 2025 Bridgerton Advent gradient from Castle View Yarns (in reverse) as my contrast colour(s), within the colourwork bands of this sweater. In the first band, I used the Shades 24-17 (which I talked about in detail in last week’s post!).

In this second band of colourwork, I used the shades 17-9. I mentioned last week that I only worked one row at the end of the first band in shade 17, so I continued on with it at the start of the second band to help the gradient flow through the sweater. However, because I did my deep-dive into that shade last week, I’ve skipped it in this post!

Just like last time, here are the shades, their names and my ✨educated guesses✨ of their inspirations from the show!

16: ‘The Modiste’s Thread’

This pinky-purple shade is obviously inspired by Madame Delacroix, the ton’s modiste in the show. In general, Madame Delacroix wears darker colours than this (think navys, blacks and dark purples!), so I don’t think it is directly inspired by her character, but, as the name suggests, by the fabrics and materials that she uses in her dress-making business! In fact, there’s a scene in Season 3 where she’s suggesting fabrics to Penelope Featherington and holds up a lilac material that does remind me a little of this yarn!

15: ‘Den Of Iniquity‘

This grape shade is named after Lady Danbury’s exclusive soirée for the married women of the ton, which Daphne Bridgerton is invited to in Season 1. Daphne wears purple to attend the event, a colour she shifts into wearing after her marriage. However, the Danbury colours are typically deeper, more jewel-toned shades, which I think is where the darker tone of this yarn comes into play.

14: ‘Bane Of My Existence’

This purple shade is named after one of the most iconic quotes from Season 2, said by Anthony Bridgerton to Kate Sharma. Kate is often shown wearing deeper shades (lots of teal and purple!) than her debutante sister, Edwina, and this moody purple feels very evocative of her relationship with the Viscount.

13: ‘Mallet Of Death’

The so-called ‘Mallet of Death’ in the Bridgerton family’s Pall Mall kit may be black, but Kate Sharma wields it twice throughout Season 2 and both times she is wearing a purple dress, so this deep, aubergine shade feels like a perfect fit!

12: ‘Love Is Not Finite

This shade is very similar to ‘Bane of My Existence’: a ‘true’ purple, albeit slightly deeper and more blue-toned. The name ‘Love Is Not Finite’ comes from the scene in Season 3, where Benedict offers his sister, Eloise, advice. If I’m being honest, I was sure that Violet Bridgerton said this line to Anthony in Season 2 (hence the purple), but I was completely wrong! While neither Benedict nor Eloise wear purple in the Season 3 scene, Benedict’s love interest Sophie does wear this colour when she works as a maid at Bridgerton House in Season 4 and, while I know these colours were designed long before the release of Season 4, I still think it’s a fun twist of fate!

11: ‘We Chose To Love

This lavender shade is named after a quote that is definitely said by Violet Bridgerton! She says this while imparting some advice to her daughter, Daphne, towards the end of Season 1. This colour ties in so nicely with Violet’s character, both with the purple reference in her name and the little specks of ‘Bridgerton Blue’.

10: ‘The Queen’s Sparkler’

This shade must be a reference to Francesca Bridgerton in Season 3, who makes her debut and eventually becomes the Queen’s so-called ‘Sparkler‘. This is a delicate, soft blue shade, shot through with hints of purple, pink and gold.

9: ‘What If I Want To Fly?’

This shade marks a clear shift into the blues of the gradient, and is named after a quote spoken by Eloise Bridgerton. Within the blue, this yarn contains hints of the green of Eloise’s dress in this scene, as well as a stronger, more vibrant blue shade that I think reflects the character’s bold attitude (and general recalcitrance) well.

Final Thoughts

And that is how Week 2 of working on my Porcelain Sweater x Bridgerton Advent project went! I’m still really enjoying this process, even though I found that leaf section in the second colourwork band… a little less enjoyable than the other sections! It’s been so satisfying watching the gradient form alongside the varying patterns and it has been very nice to fall back into the swing of knitting in the round again!

If you're interested...

You can purchase the Porcelain Sweater pattern by LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe on Ravelry here.

You can find the Ravelry project page for my Porcelain Sweater here.

You can check out Castle View Yarns here.

Gemma

xxx

Last week, I talked you through all of my plans for my current project: a Porcelain Sweater made with the 2025 Bridgerton Advent mini skeins from Castle View Yarns. This week, the knitting begins!

I actually have to confess something: I’m already a couple of weeks into knitting this sweater! By the time I got around to sharing my first WIP Wednesday last week, I had already been sitting on the post for a little while and got myself all in a pickle with the timeline… I figured the best thing to do was just to let you know, continue writing these weekly updates as I go and share them every Wednesday, so you’ll still see my weekly progress, just a couple of weeks after the actual knitting has taken place! Hopefully, after this project, I can bring my WIP Wednesday posts a little closer to real-time, so I feel less fraudulent…

Anyway, let’s roll back a couple of weeks and talk about the first 7 days of knitting my Porcelain Sweater!

Progress

Here’s what I knitted in my first week:

• Top of the back
• Left shoulder
• Right shoulder
• First few rows of the front, with the shoulders joined together

Not too bad, right?! So far there’s been a bit of shaping, a bit of colourwork-ing and a bit of good old fashioned stockinette stitch. Something for everyone!

Mid-Knit Thoughts & Musings

I have been really enjoying knitting this project— it feels like perfect balance of simple and challenging to keep me interested, but not overwhelmed.

From a technical side, so far, I’ve been able to practise the backwards loop cast on and German short rows, as well as my colourwork technique. Everything so far has been knit flat, so the colourwork has been a little bit of a learning curve— I feel like I’ve really nailed down my colourwork technique when knitting, but not quite so much when purling, so I’ve had to adjust to that.

I have found that I need to knit a few extra rows here and there in the cream stockinette sections, just because my row gauge is slightly tighter than the pattern calls for. I’m making a Size L and purchased 12 balls of DROPS Merino Extra Fine as my main colour, but I think there’s a relatively strong chance that I’ll run out (mainly because of those extra rows)… I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that I have enough!

After making my colourwork swatch, I decided to reverse the order of the contrast colours on the sweater, so that the warmer, pink shades are closest to my face. I’m very pale (sometimes bordering on a slightly… ghostly grey, depending on how unwell I’m feeling) but I do have brown eyes, so I think these will be the most flattering shades for me, hence the decision to position them closer to my face. I didn’t think of the placement at all until I made the swatch, at which point I realised I preferred the gradient upside down (as pictured) than right way up!

As a result, for my colourwork sections, I’m working from the Day 24 shade through to Day 1, not from Day 1 to Day 24. I spent a while deciding how best to split up the rows between the colours, and with a little counting and (light maths), I worked out that I could do 2 rows of each shade, plus an extra row of 7 of them, because I have 24 shades and there are 55 rows worked with the contrast colour. I tried to stagger the 3-row bands of colour pretty evenly throughout the jumper, so that the difference wasn’t too noticeable. I think it’s working really well so far!

I opted to recreate the colourwork chart from the pattern on Numbers (Apple’s slightly less heavy-duty answer to Microsoft’s Excel). I did this mainly so that I could use my own colours within the chart, because I realised things might get pretty confusing pretty quickly with so many colour changes. This also allowed me to get an idea of how the patterned band would look, which was very helpful.

I was a little confused by the chart for this band at first, because the middle section of stitches is labelled separately as the ‘repeat’. However, I followed my general policy of knitting-exactly-what-you-see (it has stood me in good stead so far!) and soon realised that, because this section is knit flat, the chart does not need to be (and is not) cyclical in its entirety, so it all made sense in the end.

In this colourwork band, there are four plain rows where you need to either carry the non-working yarn across the back of the work or cut the yarn and reattach it at the end of the row, so that you can work the pattern in the following row. I totally forgot that this would be the case, because I’m so used to knitting colourwork in the round, but it is often a necessary evil when working colourwork flat, like this. I managed to avoid one of these instances, because my contrast colour change fell in exactly the right place (which was unplanned, but absolutely delicious)! Towards the bottom of the band, I did have a scenario where I should have carried the contrast yarn behind the main colour, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to use more of my special, Advent yarns than necessary, so I cut that yarn and reattached it at the end of the row. I was a little reluctant to do that, because I’m already a bit worried about finding places for all of these yarn ends without bulking up the sweater too much, so for the other two instances, where it was the cream shade that needed to be carried, I did, just to reduce the number of ends (though I know this will not help my potentially-running-out-of-yarn problem…).

As it turns out, carrying yarns all the way across a piece of work is not one of my fortes: ironically, because patterns always warn you not to make your floats too tight, I always leave mine too loose! My current way of dealing with this is to knit the whole row, then go back afterwards and adjust the floats to make them the perfect tension, which isn’t the most efficient method, but has been working for me so far.

Also, before I forget, I’ve been very diligent about keeping my yarn dominance the same throughout this project, because I want to make sure everything looks really even. I’m keeping my contrast colour(s) as the dominant yarn, so, whenever I work the colourwork sections, I’m always double-checking that the main colour floats are going over the contrast colour floats (i.e. the contrast colour is sitting closer to the back of the fabric).

Castle View Yarns 2025 Bridgerton Advent: Shades 24-17

For the first band of colourwork, I used shades 24-17 of the 2025 Bridgerton Advent from Castle View Yarns. There’s only one row of Shade 17 at the end of this band, but I’ll be using it again at the start of the second band too, to help the gradient flow through the design. I thought it would be fun to share the yarn shades that I’ve used so far here, along with their names and (my best guesses at) their inspirations from Bridgerton!

24: ‘Souls That Dance’

This golden orange shade is named after a quote from Season 2, said by Kate Sharma during her sister Edwina’s Haldi Ceremony. I’ve always loved the colours in this scene, so I was very excited to see it represented in this Advent!

23: ‘You Occupy My Every Thought’

This coppery-pink shade is named after a quote from Season 3, said by Penelope Featherington during Colin Bridgerton’s dream sequence. The scene takes place at night and is very romantic and misty, with firelight flickering across the stone walls and the actors’ skin, infusing everything with a subtle, pink glow. I think that rosy glow must have inspired this yarn!

22: ‘I Would Not Need Flowers’

This pink shade, flecked through with orange, is named after a quote from Season 1, said by the Duke of Hastings to Daphne Bridgerton. I think this shade really suits its name, but, try as I might, I can’t quite figure out the inspiration behind it! The pink shade does show up, albeit very subtly, in the scene, on the cravat of a passerby and (perhaps?) on the pattern of the Duke’s waistcoat, though I’m most inclined to take it as a reference to blushing, because the Duke was being… a little bit risqué here. Daphne’s hair also has quite a gingery undertone in this scene, so perhaps that’s where the orange flecks come in? Either way, I really love the combination of pink and orange, particularly in flowers, so I really, really love this shade.

21: ‘My Wit & My Wardrobe’

This berry shade is named after a quote from Season 1, said by the iconic Lady Danbury. This colour so perfectly encapsulates the character, who typically wears darker, more dramatic jewel tones— I love it!

20: ‘Scandal’

This blackberry shade has more of a general, thematic name, rather than taking inspiration from a direct quote in the series (scandal is, after all, a recurring element in the show, throughout all of the seasons!). This colourway has a similar intensity to ‘My Wit & My Wardrobe’, but is slightly more cool-toned, marking a shift towards the lighter pinks and lilacs in the gradient.

19: ‘Cressida’s Corsage’

This pink shade is (I believe!) another more general name: throughout all of the seasons of the show, Cressida Cowper’s dedication to the colour pink is unwavering, so this feels like a fitting tribute.

18: ‘Love Match’

This pale pink shade is shot through with hints of orange, blue and lilac. The concept of a ‘love match’ is a recurring theme in the show and I think this shade encapsulates it perfectly: to me, the pink creates a backdrop of love and affection, while the orange flecks infuse it with a little bit of fiery passion, the blue the more painful parts of real, human love and the lilac the peace that comes with finding a true connection. I think this one is particularly clever, even if I’m more drawn to some of the deeper shades.

17. ‘First Spark Of Affection’

We’re shifting into the purples now with this lilac shade. At first, I thought that this shade was inspired by Francesca Bridgerton, because I knew the title was from a quote in the scene in Season 3 where she is being introduced to the Queen’s suitor for her. However, upon further research, I actually think it’s inspired more directly by Violet Bridgerton (the speaker of the quote itself) and the outfit she’s wearing in the scene: a lavender jacket and a dusky, pinky-plum dress. I think this is a lovely tribute, especially given that Season 3 is when Violet finds her own ‘first spark of affection’ since her husband’s passing.

And those are the yarns from the 2025 Bridgerton Advent that I used for the first band of colourwork on my Porcelain Sweater! I worked 2 rows with each shade, except for ‘You Occupy My Every Thought’ and ‘Scandal’, which I worked 3 rows each of, and ‘First Spark of Affection’, which I worked 1 row of (and will continue on with at the start of the next colourwork band, to help the gradient flow).

Final Thoughts

And that is how the first week of making my Porcelain Sweater x Bridgerton Advent project went! I really am loving this process— I feel like I lost my spark a little with knitting, but it’s definitely back now. I think the fact that I’m just following the pattern, so it feels fairly simple, but doing something a little creative with the colours, so it also feels exciting and special, is working really well for me and I’m absolutely loving watching the pattern and the gradient appear as I knit.

If you're interested...

You can purchase the Porcelain Sweater pattern by LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe on Ravelry here.

You can find the Ravelry project page for my Porcelain Sweater here.

You can check out Castle View Yarns here.

Gemma

xxx

Back in May, I set up a Knitting Scrapbook as a way of creating a physical record of some of my more ambitious and creative projects. Today’s post features the first of those projects: a Porcelain Sweater, made using the yarn from the 2025 Bridgerton Advent from Castle View Yarns! I figured this would be a great project to try out this new, weekly update approach because it’s a little more complicated than most of my other makes!

In this post, I’ll take you through my planning process for this sweater and chat a little bit about the yarn I’m using, how I set up the corresponding pages in my Knitting Scrapbook and, of course, the swatching stage!

Castle View Yarns: 2025 Bridgerton Advent

This project was definitely one that started from the yarn— I bought the yarn and chose the pattern for the yarn, not the other way around!

Because this yarn was an Advent collection, it is no longer available (which is a huge shame, because it is so, so beautiful!). However, Castle View Yarns has a large range of other beautiful yarns to choose from, so I’d definitely recommend checking out the shop anyway!

The Backstory

I was so thrilled that I managed to snatch up one of the leftover Merino DK versions of the 2025 Bridgerton Advent from Castle View Yarns last year, after I missed the cut off date for preorders. I had been intending to purchase the 4ply version, but it sold out immediately! Instead, I settled for the DK version and I’m actually really pleased now, because it led to this project.

The first time I heard about the Advent was through an Instagram post that was suggested to me the day after preorders closed (literally! The day after!), which was such bad luck. I was truly heartbroken because I felt like this product was just made for me: I mean, I love Bridgerton, I love yarn and I love Advent calendars! Even more so, I loved the concept colour palette for the collection: this gorgeous, muted rainbow gradient. Unable to admit defeat, I waited (kind of patiently, kind of obsessively) until Castle View Yarns announced when the leftover stock would be on sale, set multiple alarms and started refreshing the webpage from about 5 minutes before the release time. Honestly, I have not taken anything quite this seriously since I got my tickets for the Eras Tour!

At 6pm on the dot, on a dark evening in November, I was there, ready to go and get the yarn that I had been dreaming about ever since May. Unfortunately, I got lost on the webpage (no, seriously, I couldn’t figure out which listing was which and nearly purchased one of the Weekly Advents, which I’m sure was lovely, but wasn’t quite what I wanted!). Eventually, I found the right place, put the 4ply Daily Advent in my basket, went to check out and… it had been sold! Disaster!

In a haze, I went back to the listing and found that there were still a couple of the DK versions available. In that moment, I made a split second decision to go for it, despite having no idea what I’d use it for. I had come this far, though and was not about to be defeated!

My last-minute Advent arrived on the 1st December, which was super fast and meant I could open one yarn package each day, as intended. If you’ve been here for a while, you might remember that I was absolutely plagued by colds and illnesses last December, which was not fun at all, but opening up this Advent every day bought me so much joy— it was so special! I loved seeing all the colours in person, seeing the Bridgerton inspiration in their names and shades and watching the gradient form during the course of the month.

The Yarn

The 2025 Bridgerton Advent that I purchased included 24 x 20g mini skeins of Soft Merino DK (a 100% superwash merino, 225m/100g yarn). The shades form a soft, muted rainbow gradient, beginning and ending in the golden-orange shades. All of the shades had specific inspirations from the Bridgerton Series (up to Season 3, because Season 4 had not yet been released at that point!).

The yarns came individually wrapped and numbered in a velvety grey sack (like, a fancy sack, not a sack sack). A wax-sealed (!) envelope was enclosed, which contained a list of all of the yarn names, day-by-day. Also, there was a little glass bee stitch marker wrapped into the Day 1 package, along with the yarn, which was a fun surprise! My only problem was that, inside of the packages, the yarn itself was not labelled, so I used some card and safety pins to label it myself, in case I got all of the shades mixed up (which, honestly, might still have happened at some point— I wouldn’t be able to tell!).

I paid £145 for the Advent, along with £3.95 in shipping, bringing my total to £148.95. I know that this is a lot of money, though it is actually pretty reasonable for hand-dyed yarn from a one-woman business, I think! Nevertheless, I specifically saved for this product, knowing how much joy it would bring me and considering it a super special, Christmas present to myself.

Deciding What to Make with the Yarn

I spent a long time deciding what to make with this yarn. There are lots of patterns designed for 4ply Advent yarns, but not quite so many for DK Advent yarns. I spent a lot of time scrolling through Ravelry, looking for inspiration, obsessively checking the meterage of each project and just being generally indecisive and unsure.

Time ticked by (which is why I’m only just working with my 2025 Advent yarn now, in August 2026!), until I suddenly stumbled upon the perfect project. It was a pattern that was already in my favourites, that I knew I wanted to make at some point but hadn’t yet contemplated super seriously. It was, of course, the ever-popular Porcelain Sweater by LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe!

Porcelain Sweater

The Porcelain Sweater is an incredibly popular, knitted jumper pattern. It’s typically made with just two colours: a main colour, which forms the bulk of the sweater, and a contrast colour, which is used to work three horizontal bands of colourwork. My idea was to use a classic, cream shade for the main colour, but to use the Advent yarns as the contrast colour, working my way through the gradient as I worked my way down through the colourwork

bands. To help myself visualise this, I sketched (read: I traced, your girl is not an artist) out what I had in mind on my iPad and, in doing so, convinced myself to go for it!

The suggested yarn for the Porcelain Sweater is a fingering weight yarn, held together with a mohair to give a DK-ish weight. I’m not a huge fan of mohair anyway, so I was happy to replace those two yarns with a single strand of DK. The next challenge was finding a cream yarn that was similar to the Advent yarn base that I could use as the main colour, which meant that, ideally, I wanted the yarn to fit the following conditions:

• Superwash
• Merino
• 225m/100g
• Not too pricey (because I’d already spent so much on the Advent itself!)

Eventually, I settled on DROPS Merino Extra Fine. This is a superwash, merino yarn that I have used before and isn’t too expensive (£3.50 per ball). It’s ever so slightly thicker than the Advent yarn (105m/50g, compared to 225m/100g), which isn’t ideal, but it worked out fine when I swatched it. You can feel the difference in the two yarns slightly when you’re knitting, but you can’t tell just by looking at the knitted fabric.

Knitting Scrapbook

Once I’d made all of those big decisions, it was time to get out my Knitting Scrapbook and christen it with its first project! I was so excited for this part— I really wanted the pages to reflect my vision for the finished project and add an extra level of fun and creativity to the whole process!

This project will have 3 x double-page spreads: a Mood Board, a Notes/Progress Tracker and, finally, a spread dedicated to Photos of the final product!

Mood Board

I wanted my mood board to have lots of colour, to reflect all of the colours in the finished jumper! I really leaned into the scrapbooking style and layered up patterned papers, printed photos, stickers and stamped designs to encapsulate everything that had been swirling around in my mind since I dreamed this project up.

I included my mockup of the finished jumper, as well as the original pattern photo from LE KNIT and a still from the show of Violet Bridgerton drinking from a porcelain cup (because it felt very fitting).

I also included images of the yarns I would be using: photos of the Advent yarns that I had taken, as well as images of the DROPS yarn that I found online and the original graphic for the Advent too.

Notes/Progress Tracker

This spread is a little less busy, because its main purpose is to provide a space for me to jot down any important information about the project as I knit it up.

On the left-hand page, I have labelled the space ‘Notes’: this will be where I can write down any significant changes I’ve made, or any otherwise important information that I need to remember (needle size, yarn amounts etc.).

On the right-hand page, there’s a space for keeping track of my progress. This isn’t as useful as the notes section but, seeing as this scrapbook is supposed to be part-useful journal, part-memento, I think it will be a nice page to come back to in the future and see how long the project took me and what order I did everything in.

Gauge Swatching

The Porcelain Jumper is knit both flat and in the round at different points throughout the process. In both sections, some of the work is plain, using only one colour, and some of the work is worked with two strands of yarn to form the colourwork. Because of this, it was hard to know which way to work the gauge swatch: I usually swatch in the round, because the majority of a jumper is usually knitted that way, but it is one of my absolute least favourite things to do.

In the end, I began the swatching journey with a flat swatch of just the DROPS yarn on 4.0mm needles. I then worked a swatch in the round using the same yarn and needles, so that I could compare my tensions. My tension in the round was a little looser, so I tried making the flat swatch again using a 4.5mm needle. I blocked my swatches, checked my tensions and decided that the yarn would work for the pattern and the suggested 4mm needle was best, both flat and in the round (either the flat swatch loosened out a little or the round swatch tightened up— who knows, but they were pretty similar in the end!).

The next stage was to swatch the colourwork. I decided to swatch the colourwork flat, because I knew it was going to be a complicated enough process without introducing the whole working-in-the-fake-round thing. I opted to knit a single row of each of the 24 colours of yarn in the swatch so that, when I blocked it, I could see whether any of the colours would run, which was one of my biggest concerns with this project. The charts in the pattern each contain 17-19 rows of colourwork, so I had to extend one of them a little to fit all 24 colours in (which was no matter— it’s just a swatch after all!).

Amazingly, none of the colours ran, despite the fact that there are some quite deep-toned reds and purples, along with some quite strong greens. I was thrilled! I was also absolutely in love with the swatch: just like my mockup of the finished Porcelain Sweater, the colourwork swatch definitely gave me that “I’m on the right track!” feeling.

Final Thoughts

And with that, I was ready to begin! I planned this Porcelain Sweater x Bridgerton Advent pretty thoroughly, because I knew it was a little out of the ordinary for me. At the end of the day though, I did just want to get going so, once the DROPS yarn arrived, I got started! I haven’t made a whole lot of sweaters, so I was slightly daunted, but I was also so excited to see how the project worked up.

As I mentioned, I’m going to be trying something a little new with this project by posting weekly updates. I’ll be showing you how far I’ve got, chatting about any changes/choices I’ve made and sharing my mid-knit thoughts with you as we go. I hope I’ll see you back here next week, for another WIP Wednesday!

If you're interested...

You can purchase the Porcelain Sweater pattern by LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe on Ravelry here.

You can find the Ravelry project page for my Porcelain Sweater here.

Gemma

xxx