ponchomania...

I’ve had several enquiries about poncho patterns lately. And it begs the question, what exactly, is a poncho? Is it a blanket, a shawl, a wrap? Mostly, I’ve always thought of a poncho as being a thing that goes over your head and covers up easily, mostly worn for warmth. Back in the day it was in late winter way back when, I made this thing called It’s a Wrap. Made on the LK150, the pattern was in the Spring 1999, Knitwords No.8 and the caption read:
Call it a poncho, cape or cloak! Whatever, it’s lovely to wear and easy to knit! A great yarn (alpaca/wool), knit in stockinette, really wide, a long-sloped shoulder with a small cuff to create a ‘sleeve’ and a vee neck opening filled in with another piece of stockinette collar. One size fits all!

We had a great time at the photoshoot with it and I wore it a few times after then, sister Marnie fell in love with it and asked for it. Of course, I gave it to her but I kind of missed it.
I re-engineered it to delete some of the volume at the sides, re-knit it using a tweedy DK yarn and I’ve been wearing it off and on for the past almost 20 years, both spring and fall. When I got the first query about a poncho pattern, I dearly wanted to remake this one again and add a hood – I’ve already admitted to being a hoodie junkie – but because this one is black and goes with virtually everything, I didn’t feel justified in making a new one for myself. My d-i-l was over the other day and I asked her if she’d like a poncho – she was thrilled, tried mine one, picked out a colour and timidly asked if she could have a hood on hers!