Life’s pretty straight without some Twisties in your wardrobe.
The beloved Aussie snack food is now in a range of merch at Lowes stores. There’s board shorts and a shirt that you can wear as a none-too-subtle set, plus undies and socks.
But I took it one step further and made my own Twisties merch.
@lifehackerau Sure, you can buy @twistiesau merch at @lowesaustralia, or you can knit your own retro Twisties jumper! Hit the link in bio for the full instructions. #Twisties #snacks #merch #Lowes
This all started when I saw Poh Ling Yeow rocking a vintage Twisties jumper on Snackmasters.
I went down a rabbit hole real quick, trying to find a copy of the knitting pattern to make my own.
I soon found thread after thread of fellow crafters who had all been on the same hunt — for years in some cases! One of the threads on Ravelry (an incredible portal for knitting and crochet patterns) mentioned that the pattern was originally a promotional campaign for Twisties in the early 1980s.
But there was no sign of the pattern online.
Digging through the comments I found a glimmer of hope — someone said if you contact the manufacturers of Twisties they can send you a copy. It was a long shot, given this tip-off was almost a decade old, but what did I have to lose?
I tracked down the media contact for Twisties, shot off an email, and within an hour I had the OG pattern.
Now, because knitting patterns fall under copyright — as they should, a lot of work goes into them — I then had to ask for permission to share the pattern with you all. And the good people at Twisties came through!
One thing before we get into the nitty gritty of it: if you are a crafter and use a pattern to make your own garment then humble-brag about it on Instagram (like I do), it’s best practice to credit the creator of pattern in your caption. So please give Twisties a shout.
Without further ado…
Here is the Twisties jumper knitting pattern
And here is the finished Twisties jumper, by me
There were a few hurdles to get to this point, let me tell you!
Before we get into that, a note about the yarns I used. While the original pattern used Totem yarn, which you can still get, essentially you can use any 8-ply wool that fits the gauge. I went with ‘Sunshine’ from Nundle Woollen Mill for the main, some ‘Love Heart’ red from Bendigo Woollen Mills that I had left over from another project, and a random ball of white merino that I go from my local knitting store.
Now, on my first attempt (yes, there were many), I followed the full OG pattern, with the slight alteration of all-yellow ribbing for the hem and cuffs (the red and yellow cuffs in the vintage pattern sound like a nightmare to make). But the front piece came out looking like a sack, and because I wanted the same cropped fit as Poh’s (to be fair, she was actually wearing a children’s jumper), I started again.
On the second attempt I decided to combine the Twisties jumper colour graph with my favourite No Frills Sweater by Petite Knit that’s knit in the round, all in one piece, so there’s no sewing up. Plus I’ve made heaps of these sweaters now so I know the fit is perfect for me. But then I had to work out how to do a colour graph in the round, rather than back-and-forth like the Twisities jumper was designed to be made. YouTube was my saviour here.
However, because I decided to go with the duplicate stitch option from the OG pattern, thinking it would make things easier for me — it means you hand sew the white parts of the pattern over the yellow and red rather than having a heap of threads carry through the inside of the jumper — I instead made things harder for myself. The duplicate stitch looked awful up close. So I unravelled the entire jumper and started again, this time working all three colours of the Twisties jumper graph together.
We got there in the end and she’s a beauty!
If you’re new to knitting, I can assure you it’s a great hobby for mindfulness, but also one that shows you why garments can cost so much in stores. It’s definitely worth the effort!
This article has been updated since it was first published.
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