Knitting my first ever matching set!

Since I work as a middle school teacher and spend my days with teenagers, my work life can be quite hectic. As a result, most of my evenings are spent at home, relaxing in front of TV, with knitting needles clickety-clicking. And, as a result of that, I knit A LOT. In 2025, I knit 13 garments and 10 accessories. And since my wife is also a knitter (and a seamstress!) I'm slightly worried that our wardrobe will run out of space in the not too far distant future. 

So, what's my solution? I started thinking that maybe I should intentionally pick projects that are challenging, large, and take a long time to finish, so as not to complete too many projects too quickly.

When I last visited Australia, I ordered some yarn from one of my all-time favourite brands, Bendigo Woollen Mills, and my plan was to knit a 40s style suit. I was thinking a skirt and a short-sleeved blouse, since I hadn't knitted Squidney's Swing It! blouse and De-lovely skirt set yet. That yarn, a very fine 5ply in a beautiful shade called "Napoleon Blue", has been sitting in my stash for a couple of years now, because the idea of knitting a skirt just felt... a bit too much. But after finishing yet another quick bolero in the start of October, I decided it was Finally Time, and cast on the skirt. 

Like all of Squidney's patterns, the construction of the garment is really clever: you start knitting from the waist down and use a fun method to create a channel for an elastic. The skirt is mainly just stockinette stitch, but on each side there is a rib detail that continues all the way to the hem. 25 cms before binding off, you start adding 24 sts every few rounds to create a very nice swoosh-y effect. 

Going in, I thought I'd be bored to death by the zillions stockinette rounds, but you know what, it wasn't half bad. Altogether, the skirt took me about a month, after which I tried it on, and kinda hated the swoosh-y feature - it was stiff and silly-looking. But that was before blocking, so I threw the skirt into a bucket of water and hoped for the best - and luckily the best did indeed happen, and the blocked skirt looks PERFECT. Well, in my opinion anyway. 

There's really nothing cozier than a knitted skirt - or at least, if there is, it doesn't look half as snazzy. I don't really believe in going to work in my pyjama pants, and a knitted skirt is the next best thing. Add a matching blouse, and voilà: you're a perfectly put-together person. I may be suffering from cramps, exhaustion or whatever the heck else, but when I'm wearing my turquoise blue bouclé wool skirt and top set, people just tell me that I look great. A knit set is one of the greatest optical illusions there is. 

So obviously I still had to make the matching blouse. I'd thought that the skirt would take up so much yarn that I could only make a short-sleeved blouse (and I do the those and have quite a bunch that I wear all the time!) but in the end decided that I had plenty of yarn to knit full-length sleeves. In fact, I ended up making the sleeve puffs even bigger than I usually do, and I still have so much yarn left that I can easily use it to make another colourwork jumper - which will also match my knitted skirt, as a rather nice bonus!

I cast on the skirt on October 2, and finished setting in the second sleeve of the jumper on December 25, so altogether it's taken me nearly three months to finish the whole suit. And I have to say that knitting it was mostly fun and not boring, and thinking of the finished suit really kept me going. I ADORE the finished set, and since we will travel to Australia again this year (and visit Bendigo!) I'm already planning my next suits. I'm thinking of a tweed dolman sleeved suit and another one in burnt orange or maybe red...