I thought after the Totoro sweater I should make a dressier cardi­gan for more grown-up occa­sions like inter­views and work.

And today, I’m going to attempt to trans­late my scrib­bles and dia­grams into an actu­al pat­tern! Yes, my dia­gram of a rec­tan­gle, a trape­zoid, and sev­er­al num­bers on a sin­gle piece of sticky note. I did jot down these things so I can write the pat­tern lat­er, and I’m sure they made per­fect sense then, but how did I expect myself to make sense of it months lat­er? Please bear with me as I try to write a pat­tern that makes sense, and please drop me a note if you have any questions!

Here’s the cardi­gan :D

Because I made it in black (for dressi­ness, you see), I over­ex­posed the pho­tos a lot so you can see the details. I like shawl-style col­lars, they go well with most shirts. Except maybe col­lared shirts, but I don’t have many of those.

I added some sim­ple details so it’s not just rows upon rows of dou­ble-cro­chet, which would be bor­ing to look at and to make. Here’s the back…

 

Here’s a close up of the shawl-collar…

The con­struc­tion is extreme­ly sim­ple. There’s hard­ly any shap­ing, just a bunch of rec­tan­gu­lar shapes sewn togeth­er, and then cro­chet­ing along the front and neck to make the col­lar. So I imag­ine it would be pret­ty easy to mod­i­fy by adding or sub­tract­ing stitch­es as needed.

I got this yarn from my mom, who got it from my grand­ma in Hong Kong. There was nev­er any label on it. But I com­pared it with my oth­er yarn and it looks clos­est to fin­ger­ing weight. One way to increase the size of the cardi­gan would be to use a heav­ier yarn (sport, DK, or worsted with good drape) and larg­er hooks (5–6.5mm).

Edit: Since I’m see­ing A LOT of traf­fic to this post late­ly (thanks so much for vis­it­ing every­one! I have nev­er had that many views before and I think the site might have crashed for a bit…), I’m repost­ing here my reply to a vis­i­tor’s com­ment below about adding stitch­es to the foun­da­tion ch to increase the size of the cardi­gan — hope this helps! As usu­al please feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions!

“to add width to the sweater shouldn’t be dif­fi­cult, as they are just rec­tan­gles. you can add more stitch­es to the foun­da­tion ch. it’s approx­i­mate­ly 10 stitch­es for 2 inch­es, and the sweater i made is 32″ around. so for exam­ple, for a size 36″ sweater I would add 20 ch to the back, and 6 ch to each of the front left and front right pieces (the eye­let row needs an odd num­ber of stitch­es). so you can add ch in mul­ti­ples of 10 and split them between the back, front left and front right pieces accord­ing to the size you need. the same goes for the sleeves. my sleeves are 11″ around at the widest part. you can also do more increase rows in between so the cuff wouldn’t become too wide, maybe increase every oth­er dc row through­out after the first 6 rows. hope this helps!”

I used:

Fin­ger­ing weight yarn, about 1600 yards

4 mm hook

Stitch mark­ers (or con­trast­ing colour scrap yarn)

Size:

Bust 32″, length 21″, sleeve length (under­arm to cuff) 17″

Gauge:

6 rows of 10 dc = 2″ x 2″

Pat­tern:

Back

ch 83.

Row 1: dc in 4th ch from hook, dc in each ch across, turn.

Row 2: ch 3 (counts as a dc through­out), dc in each dc across, turn.

Rows 3–5: repeat row 2.

Row 6 (eye­let row): ch 4, skip first dc, dc in next dc, *ch 1, skip next dc, dc in next dc* repeat from * to * to end.

Row 7: ch 3, dc in first ch 1 sp, dc in next dc, *dc in ch 1 sp, dc in next dc* repeat from * to * to end.

For the rest of back:

Work in pat­tern so that there are 5 dc rows between eye­let rows, until there are 8 eye­let rows alto­geth­er, then work 5 more dc rows. There will be 53 rows alto­geth­er. Fas­ten off.

Right and left fronts (make 2)

ch 25.

Work in same pat­tern for back until there are 53 rows alto­geth­er. Fas­ten off.

Sleeves (make 2)

ch 41.

Work in rows 1–7 of back.

Row 8 (increase row): ch 3, 2 dc in next dc, dc in each dc until last dc, 2 dc in last dc, turn.

Rows 9–11: dc rows.

Row 12: eye­let row.

Row 13: dc row.

Repeat rows 8–13 four (4) more times. Basi­cal­ly, every sec­ond row after the eye­let row is an increase row.

Next: work 1 dc row, one increase row, one dc row, one eye­let row.

Next: *work 1 dc row, one increase row, one dc row, one increase row, one dc row*, one eye­let row. (Basi­cal­ly, every sec­ond and fourth rows after the eye­let row is an increase row.)

Next: repeat from * to *. Fas­ten off.

Assem­bly

With right sides fac­ing each oth­er (wrong side fac­ing you), sew shoul­ders together.

With right side fac­ing itself, fold sleeve in half length­wise, mark the cen­ter at the top edge of sleeve. With right sides fac­ing each oth­er, pin the cen­ter of top edge of sleeve to shoul­der seam. Pin the rest of the top edge of sleeve along the front and back pieces. Sew sleeve to front and back. Repeat for the oth­er sleeve.

Sew side and underarm/sleeve seams together.

Turn cardi­gan right side out.

Col­lar

With right side fac­ing, attach yarn to low­er left cor­ner of cardi­gan front. ch 3.

Row 1: Even­ly cro­chet a row of dc up the left front, 2 dc tog in the last stitch of the left front and the first stitch of the back, place mark­er, dc along the top edge of the back, 2 dc tog in the last stitch of the back and first stitch of the right front, place mark­er, and dc down the right front, turn.

(What seems to work for me to even­ly cro­chet a row along the edges: up and down the front pieces, cro­chet­ing into the side of a the rows — dc into the mid­dle of the dc, then dc into the joint between 2 rows. It’s not exact­ly 2 dc in each row, it’s few­er stitch­es than that. When work­ing across the back pieces, just dc into each dc.)

Row 2: ch 3, *dc in each dc until the stitch before mark­er, 2 dc tog, move mark­er up a row*, repeat from * to * once more, dc in each dc to end, turn.

Row 3: repeat row 2. Remove all markers.

Row 4: eye­let row.

Rows 5–7: dc rows.

Row 8: eye­let row.

Repeat rows 5–8 three (3) more times. Work 3 more dc rows. Fas­ten off. Weave in ends.

And here we have it, a grown-up-look­ing cardigan :)

 

Hap­py new year every­one! :D