Or, an exer­cise in cro­chet cables!

Cumu­lus is a shrug/cardigan with a ring of cables around the neck/front/back. 

 

The con­struc­tion is quite sim­ple. Basi­cal­ly, it’s mak­ing a 25″ x 26″ rec­tan­gle, fold­ing it in half, sewing the side seams, then attach­ing yarn to cro­chet the sleeves in the round. Sleeves mea­sure 11″ from where it joins the arm hole to cuff.

I used 5.5 mm and 5 mm hooks, and one ball of Lion Brand Pound of Love. 

Below are the stitch­es used, you can click on the link for instruc­tions on how to make the stitches.

fdc = foun­da­tion dou­ble crochet

bpdc = back post dou­ble crochet

fpdc = front post dou­ble crochet

bptr = back post tre­ble cro­chet (made the same way as bpdc, but make a tre­ble cro­chet stitch instead of a dou­ble cro­chet stitch)

fptr = front post tre­ble cro­chet (same as above)

Note: you might want to make the front/back post stitch­es a bit more loose­ly than you would when mak­ing a typ­i­cal dou­ble cro­chet stitch, so that the post stitch­es are a bit taller to match the height of the reg­u­lar dc’s. 

Pat­tern:

(RS) With larg­er hook, begin with 96 fdc. (you can add to the length of the shrug by adding more fdc stitch­es at this point. 4 dc = 1″)

Row 1 (WS): ch 3 (counts as a dc through­out), [bpdc in next dc, dc in next dc, skip 3 dc, bptr in next 3 dc, turn, make 3 fptr in the skipped stitch­es, turn, dc in next dc after the 3 bptr, bpdc in next dc], dc in every dc till there are 11 stitch­es left, repeat from [ to ], dc in last dc, turn.

Here is a pho­to re-cap of how the cable was made. At the point where you’ve skipped 3 dc, bptr in next 3 dc from right to left as usual.

Now turn the piece. You’re only turn­ing the piece tem­porar­i­ly because it’s eas­i­er to work from the oth­er side to form the cable. fptr in the 3 skipped stitch­es from left to right. I’ve made the first of the 3 fptr in this picture.

Then turn the work back and con­tin­ue on pattern.

Row 2: ch 3, [fpdc in next dc, dc in next dc, fpdc in next 6 stitch­es, dc in next dc, fpdc in next dc], dc in each dc till there are 11 stitch­es left, repeat from [ to ], dc in turn­ing ch, turn.

Row 3: ch 3, [bpdc in next dc, dc in next dc, bpdc in next 6 stitch­es, dc in next dc, bpdc in next dc], dc in each dc till there are 11 stitch­es left, repeat from [ to ], dc in turn­ing ch, turn. 

Row 4: repeat row 2

Repeat rows 1 to 4 until piece is 26″ from begin­ning, end­ing with Row 3. Fas­ten off.

Side seams:

Posi­tion piece so that the cables are hor­i­zon­tal. With wrong side fac­ing out, fold piece in half (the hold is par­al­lel to the cables). Start­ing from the bot­tom of each side, cro­chet the side seams togeth­er by match­ing the stitch­es on both lay­ers and using slip stitch, cro­chet 22 sl st up each side.

Sleeves:

Turn piece right side out.

Attach yarn to a stitch near the side seam in the arm hole, ch 3, make 49 dc around the arm hole, turn.

Row 1: ch 3, dc in each dc around, sl st in top of turn­ing ch, turn.

Row 2 (decrease row): ch 3, 2 dc tog, dc in each dc until the last 2 dc, 2 dc tog, sl st in top of turn­ing ch, turn.

Row 3–4: repeat row 1.

Row 5: repeat row 2.

Repeat rows 3–5 sev­en more times. Work row 1 one more time. Don’t turn piece on the last row. 19 rows alto­geth­er on sleeve. 

Row 20 (RS): with small­er hook, ch 3, [fpdc in next st, dc in next st] repeat from [ to ] around, don’t turn.

Repeat row 20 twice. Fas­ten off. Repeat for the oth­er sleeve.

Fin­ish­ing:

Attach yarn any­where on col­lar, with larg­er hook, work 2 sc around each dc or turn­ing ch post around collar/front/back, sl st in first sc to com­plete round. Fas­ten off, weave in all ends.

Fin­ished :)

Feel free to leave me a mes­sage in the com­ments if you have any ques­tions! Hap­py crocheting!