2024 Geek-A-Long: The Natural 20th Anniversary Sweater

Hello you marvelous denizens of the Kniternet! Roll for iknitiative, because the 2024 Geek-A-Long is here, and this one is a true masterpiece.

Just about 1 year ago, when we were in the middle of our year of cozy socks and starting to plan this year’s GAL, the amazing folks at Child’s Play reached out to let us know that they were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the charity. They had an extra-big gala planned, and we were hyped to have the opportunity to work up something worthy of the occasion. We made a quick pivot and knit with a fury to bring them (and you) a sweater glorious enough to merit such an illustrious event. Luckily, I had some excellent inspiration to draw on for the design.

Lore

Long ago, when dragons guarded their hoards, skilled groups of adventurers would band together to become heroes, and magic was just the roll of a dice away – a particularly large and nasty Beholder commissioned a knitter to create a cloak worthy of his upcoming birthday. The intrepid adventure-knitter searched far and wide to find yarn that was up to the task and deep in the heart of Prismere she found a witch that for the right price could spin owlbear feathers into yarn. In addition to having a delightfully soft hand, and stunning sheen, the yarn was enchanted to bring luck (and a +1 to Charisma rolls) to anyone wearing a garment made from it. The knitter began the long journey back, knitting as she went. At long last she reached the Beholder’s lair, but found that her customer had been dispatched by a small group of 4-5 friends with a perfect balance of skills and feats. As this was a fairly common occurrence at the time the knitter instead sold her work to a local nobleman. The nobleman gifted the sweater to a beautiful gnomish bard who he’d fallen madly in love with, and she took it with her when she left town to seek fame and fortune. The bard lost the sweater in a night of poor gambling and the Fae man that won it has been quietly interfering the affairs of mortals for centuries. Last summer that same Fae encouraged hijinks and general malarky at the very theater program that my own daughter, Mabel the Merciless frequents each summer. Backstage at a delightful performance of Frozen Jr, he allowed me a glimpse of the incredible garment and I have recreated it for you!

Schedule

We will kick off next week with the project sheet and swatch, and from there clues will be released every 2 weeks as follows:

• 5/26/24 – Theme Announcement
• 6/2/24 – Project Sheet and Swatch
• 6/9/24 – Steek Tutorial
• 6/16/24 – Clue 1
• 6/30/24 – Clue 2
• 7/14/24 – Clue 3
• 7/28/24 – Clue 4
• 8/11/24 – Clue 5
• 8/25/24 – Clue 6

The Natural 20th Anniversary Dungeons and Dragons themed sweater is worked top down in 2 colors and is colorwork from collar to hem. It can be steeked (this is what we did) or if you prefer a pull over the steek can be omitted. Our swatch was designed to help you practice your steeking prowess, and if you’ve never steeked I think you should try it because it’s a terrifying adrenaline rush. I’ll also be posting a steek tutorial between the swatch instructions and the first clue.

Let’s Talk Yarn

I knit our sample in Ouroboros and Evergreen Moonbeam on Geek-A-Long yarn. We’ve dyed up sweater quantities in tons of great colors, and Jac prepared some awesome color inspiration combos below. As always, there is no pressure to use Lattes & Llamas yarn to geek along with us, you can use whatever yarn makes you happy as long as you choose 2 colors with good contrast. Most sweater patterns that are designed to be steeked will advise you to only choose 100% wool for the yarn but I’ve never been willing to accept that. I refuse to trade machine washability on most garments for steek purity. There are a lot of great ways to ensure the stability of your steek even when using a yarn with nylon blend, and my favorite is to use an iron on interfacing. I’ll tell you all about it with the swatch when it releases next week, but wanted to bring it up early so that you don’t feel constrained when choosing your yarn.

The project sheet will include all the details about sizing and materials, but if you want to get a head start on choosing your yarn the chart below has the yardage needed per size. The bust sizes here are shown in inches with yardage listed for main and contrast colors. The ball estimates are based on a standard 320(ish) yards per ball sport/DK weight yarns. For our sweater we used the darker color as the Main (MC) and the lighter color as the contrast (CC).

Color Inspirations

I loved the combo of pastel and deep green that we used, but there are tons of potential color combos out there. Jac plays a warlock in our current campaign, and art imitates life because she is a wizard when it comes to choosing colors. She’s created some gorgeous pairings and we hope you enjoy them!

~Megan-Anne

Mr. Llama is a walking D&D encyclopedia and when I was choosing yarn for ours I asked him what color was “right” for a beholder and he wisely answered “whatever color a Beholder is, is the exact right color for a Beholder and the best color any Beholder could ever be”.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider making a donation to Child’s Play Charity. Here is a direct link to our official donation page benefiting the charity. Please help us raise $1,000 this year. No contribution is too small! Wanna make your donation go even further? Lattes & Llamas will donate $1 for every skein of Geek-A-Long Yarn purchased.