Mary Maxim Roots Cowichan Sweater Pattern Review

Mary Maxim Roots Sweater. Photo by Julia Konovalov

Cowichan style sweaters have always inspired me, and I always wanted to knit one for myself. So when I saw this modernized version of an old Mary Maxim pattern, I purchased it as a kit from the Mary Maxim website back in 2016. It is not available as kit any more, but you can still purchase the pattern from here. It is designed for the bulky yarn weight and uses four yarn colours: grey, black, off white and red. There are different sizes available from S to XL.

Mary Maxim Roots Sweater

The pattern itself looks like a graph and uses the fair isle knitting technique (colours are switched at the back). The sweater consists out of five pieces in total. It took me over a year to knit it (with a lot of pauses). Then about two days to put it together and weave in ends.
My sweater turned out to be very oversized. I followed the instructions for size M, but it turned out to be more like XL.
I am still very happy with this project: it was fun working on it and boy! was I happy to finish it! I haven't knitted any sweaters for myself since I was in high school, so it was nice to work on something like this again.

Mary Maxim Roots Sweater. Photo by Julia Konovalov

Roots and Mary Maxim are both old Canadian companies. Here is some additional information on their collaboration in this project.

Did you knit or spot any cowichan style sweaters? Let me know about your experience in comments!
Lily

*All Photos are subject to copyright.*