Time to Get Your Ugly On

This is urgent, Gentle Readers: Ugly Sweater Day is only a week away. 

I don't deliberately knit ugly sweaters, as some dot-coms specialize in doing. A good Ugly Christmas Sweater look evolves over time. The idea is that you bought into the Elaborate Christmas Sweater fad in the 1990s, with something knitted in thirty different brilliant colors, little knots tied at the back of the fabric, and little buttons and sequins and beads and tassels and maybe sleigh bells all over the front. You did not painstakingly snip off each tie-on ornament before laundering and tie it back on with a fresh bit of thread. As a result it is now a pile of knotted ends, one-eyed teddy bear and moose faces where one bead's been lost, maybe a dropped stitch here and there where a knot came untied in the spin cycle, and all of the different brilliant colors faded and run together. But it's still comfy-cozy cotton and you still want to wear it for a whole day. 

So I can't help meet anyone's need for a real Ugly Christmas Sweater look, but I do happen to have some sweaters that would look ugly, if not very Christmasy, on the wrong person...

It looks shorter and wider than it is in the picture. This was one of the London "witty knits" collection that inspired the Ugly Christmas Sweater concept; it was called "Byzantine" and the original pattern, of which this was a wearable simplification, called for beads and sequins galorie. You could add them if you wanted them, in the center of every little knitted-in dot. This is a large sweater, meant to fit up to 6' tall, 46" around. 

Since shades of rose and mint green instead of traditional Christmas holly-leaf-and-berry are this season's fad...This one's meant to fit wearers up to 5'6'", 40" around.

I like this bright blue cotton sweater, myself, but the raglan sleeve line, slightly gathered waist, and pattern bands at the hem could look make someone who was just a bit overweight (or pregnant) look soooo fat...It'll be a cozy and attractive sweater after the baby is born, pregnant readers.

In real life this is a lovely symphony of autumn-leaf colors; the sides are the same length, and the incongruous purplish bit is a yarn care tag you snip off. This jacket is for a tall woman, or a man who doesn't mind a bit of attention. The cuffs are meant to be turned back but the sleeves are still long. I recommend it to people who are at least 5'10" tall and 40" around. But a small person, especially one whose blue eyes and rosy cheeks will make the yellow and brown tones look muddy, or something, might consider this an ugly sweater.

I don't really recommend this one for Ugly Sweater Day, even if you're a brown-eyed redhead with whom the colors will clash, because it 's a thick, warm piece of wool and mohair. It'll feel great to put on when you step out into a freezing wind, not so great to wear all day long.

On my browser it's showing up as purple and white, but in real life this sweater is dark and light green. The dark green could be considered a Christmas color. On most people I don't consider this sweater ugly at all, but it's a cozy cotton in a large size. A person up to 5'8" tall and 44" around might actually enjoy wearing this sweater all day, enough not to mind if it doesn't win any ugly awards. Anyway you can always tie a bit of tinsel onto it for the day. Try stringing tinsel around the shoulders and under the arms for the look of long shaggy underarm tufts, a late 1980s look I used to deplore and ridicule.

This one really is purple, and pink, red, blue, and green too. It is Eighties, over-the-top Eighties as interpreted by Patricia Roberts. It is very generously sized with some bust shaping, and should fit up to 5'10" tall and 48" around in that roomy late Eighties, early Nineties way. Fill the rather low and easy-fitting round neck with a bright tomato-red turtleneck for an eye-popping clash of ugly, ot wear it with a black turtleneck and skirt or slacks for a reasonably retro look that's not ugly at all.

Reader interest in the classic black-and-fluorescent set was what prompted me to do this post. Yes, I still have this sweater and cap. Fluorescent colors don't really suit most human complexions, though the effect is usually just unflattering, not really screamingly ugly...but you might have a wonderfully ugly combination in mind. If so, the only other thing to bear in mind is that most of this sweater is knitted in blanket-thick wool. You'd want to wear it over a cotton dress, or tunic and trousers, all day and it would be extremely warm. If, on the other hand, you want something to wear in the snowy woods to advertise to hunters that you are not a deer, this set fills the bill. It should fit people up to 5'10" tall and 40" around.

The green "plaid" look jacket--this season's bright mint green--caught a bit of sun, in storage, so it's probably the closest thing I have to a classic Ugly Christmas Sweater look. 

This is another simplified, wearable version of one of the Sue Bradley designs that inspired the Elaborate Christmas Sweater fad. You could attach big glossy beads, jingle bells, or tinsel wherever they'd look tackiest.

I see nothing ugly about it, but it's a light watermelon red instead of a bright Christmas red. It's lighter than blanket weight, and might be easier to wear all day than some hand-knitted acrylic sweaters are. Up to 5'8", 38" around.

Some people have complained that most of the yarn sold even in the "craft" stores, these days, is blanket-weight yarn, which makes bulky, heavy sweaters. Blanket-weight acrylic sweaters are great for turning snow into layers of insulation if one has to walk in falling snow, they complain, but in Virginia years go by when one doesn't, and blanket-weight, snowproof sweaters add more warmth than one really wants when one is in a heated building. Wal-Mart has recently been stocking more lighter-weight yarn, some of these people have noticed. Most of it comes in odd combinations of bright colors but it makes lighter, drapier sweaters and shawls. I have of course sold some of the bulky outdoor sweaters that have been displayed at this web site in the past, and have invested the proceeds in slightly lighter yarn. I've just about given up hope of photographing samples in such a way that anyone would feel safe buying them, but real-life shoppers can always have a look at my "works-in-progress" sample basket. I have found some lightweight yarn that does not form stripes.