I'm particularly fond of this design for several reasons. First, it uses both of the interesting Andean knitting techniques that I explain in the book -- knitting circular Stockinette stitch from the inside, purling every stitch. You purl using a technique that has also been used in Turkey and Portugal, by tensioning the yarn around your neck and flicking the yarn around the tip of the needle to make each stitch. It's fast and comes out with a very even tension. (It's interesting to trace the probably movement of this technique from the Middle East, to Spain and Portugal, and then later to the New World.)

The second technique I explain is a simplified version of how to make the scalloped punta-trim at the edges of this sweater. You make that by beginning with a crochet chain, and then picking up stitches and decreasing in a pattern that forms a scalloped edge. It sounds quite complicated, and the true Andean technique is fairly complex, but I've simplified it in a way that I think gives similarly pleasing results with much less work.

I also love the cute cat and dog charts. But I think my favorite thing about the Andean designs is that they work equally well in natural colors of yarn -- especially in the rich natural shades of alpaca -- and in brightly dyed yarns. In the Andes, many knitters today like to work with the very bright colors that are available in commercially spun yarns. Although they will buy yarns (often acrylics) to cut down on the amount of work involved, they still spend time respinning the yarn to make the twist tighter so the yarn is stronger. The colors that you can get with man-made materials are often much brighter and more colorfast than the shades you can get with natural dyes on unbleached wool or alpaca yarns. Natural fibers and organic yarns are very popular in the United States these days, and it's sometimes hard for us to remember that not all knitters have the same huge assortment of yarns available for their use and in many cases these rural knitters could not afford the luxury yarns we take for granted even if they were available to them. (I learned a lot about this while editing Marcia Lewandowski's book, Andean Folk Knits.)

I didn't include a photo of the sweaters in the book for several reasons. One of the main reasons is that I don't want readers to try to copy the sweaters that I designed. The drawings are made to provide general ideas for a starting point, so each knitter can take it from there and come up with their own unique finished product. The sweater on the cover is my friend Debbie O'Neill's interpretation of the child's sweater. Because she was making it for a toddler, the sleeves were too small to fit the large dog or cat motif, so she used simple (and easy to knit) stripes, instead. Debbie made a boat neck for the photos, but later decided to cut the neck into a shallow crew neck shape so the sweater would be easier to get on and off her daughter, without decapitating the dogs on the front of the sweater. You can read a bit about Debbie's design decisions on page 163 of Ethnic Knitting Discovery.