confetti

This yarn was a raf­fle win from a yarn hop / fundrais­ing event in 2015. I don’t usu­al­ly use or wear the colour pink, so it’s tak­en me quite a few years, as you can see, to find a project for it. 

The yarn is sin­gle ply meri­no DK by Mineville Wool Project. It’s quite com­fort­able to wear. The pat­tern is Con­fet­ti DK Pullover by Nomad Stitch­es.

I like that spe­cial care is tak­en to add short rows to the shoul­ders and back so it fits bet­ter. (Was try­ing to get a full length pic­ture of me wear­ing it but the most suc­cess­ful was one of me not being aware of pic­ture being taken.)

I hope that sum­mer is going alright for every­one so far, with much craft­ing in the sun.

stay home project

I’m still here. Things have slowed down a lot more for me. That is a sign of privilege.  I work at home, with flex­i­ble sched­ule, unstruc­tured time, gen­er­ous dead­lines. To me that’s a lot more dif­fi­cult than hav­ing a fast-paced job and mul­ti­ple projects at once because now my mind has too much space to think. But I don’t have to work in the front­line, my work isn’t essen­tial, I don’t have to risk expo­sure, so I can’t complain.  

I kept see­ing the cov­er of Inside Cro­chet issue 123 on my Insta­gram feed. I was real­ly intrigued by the lace pat­tern jux­ta­posed to rows of dou­ble-cro­chet stitch­es. And I had skeins of Patons Hemp­ster that I frogged from anoth­er project. So I down­loaded the mag­a­zine and made an effort to work on it every day.

I knew from the mea­sure­ments that it was going to be a very over-sized fit. But I could­n’t tell until I put it together –

It was REALLY big on me. Like I made a table cloth and wore it.

I even went down a hook size (4 mm hook instead of 4.5 mm as called for in the pat­tern). I’m on the small scale of humans but I sure­ly am not that small. I don’t know if I messed up the gauge or if the mod­el on the cov­er is a lot taller or wider in the shoul­ders? I still real­ly like the way the lace pat­tern is incor­po­rat­ed. So I’m going to scale down on both the yarn weight and the hook size and see if it helps. Cur­rent­ly wait­ing for more yarn to arrive in the mail so, to be continued.

In the mean­while, pass­ing on some cat love from a friend who made sure I got lots of screen time with her cat.

That look says, “no work, all cat today.”

Wish­ing you good health, safe­ty, and peace of mind today. Take good care.

 

slow: hats

Update Nov. 30/2020: I’ve received quite a few com­ments and ques­tions regard­ing this pat­tern since it’s been pub­lished. It is not a begin­ner’s pat­tern. A few folks are fine with the writ­ten pat­tern and few pho­tos, and some folks request­ed more clar­i­fi­ca­tions. I apol­o­gize that I’m not a pro­fes­sion­al pat­tern design­er, my pat­terns have not been test­ed by oth­ers (though this one was repeat­ed­ly test­ed by me), I don’t have the time or know-how to make videos, I write pat­tern and instruc­tion to the best of my abil­i­ty in the clear­est way in my under­stand­ing and offer them for free. I do acknowl­edge that the pho­tos in this par­tic­u­lar pat­tern is admit­ted­ly lack­ing. I’m sor­ry about this, and if I do make anoth­er hat this win­ter, I will retake/replace the pho­tos. Work­ing and study­ing full-time cur­rent­ly means that at this point I don’t have the time nor capac­i­ty to respond exten­sive­ly to inquiries about how to make this hat. And a lot of times I can­not deci­pher what is going wrong in the ways that peo­ple describe them with­out see­ing the pieces and show­ing peo­ple what to do in per­son. So it means that at times it is sim­ply impos­si­ble for me to help peo­ple out. Going for­ward I will sup­port and clar­i­fy to the best of my abil­i­ty, but my respons­es may be delayed. I con­tem­plat­ed tak­ing this pat­tern down alto­geth­er because it sounds like it’s been caus­ing a lot of frus­tra­tion for peo­ple. But I thought I’d still leave it up for folks who find it use­ful. Thank you for visiting.   

I’ve made quite a few of these hats with cro­chet slip stitch. I like that they’re made slowly. 

I’m going to attempt to write the pat­tern for 3 dif­fer­ent yarn weights, so it’s ver­sa­tile for what­ev­er yarn you have on hand. They all make a hat that is 19″ around and 11″ in length (with brim unfold­ed). The stitch is quit stretchy so it will fit most I think. Here’s the worsted weight ver­sion on me.

And the worsted weight ver­sion on Mike (I have a small­er head than he does).

This is the sport weight version.

After test­ing the sport weight ver­sion with a left­over skein of acrylic yarn, I treat­ed myself to a skein of meri­no hand-dyed by Toron­to Yarn Hop co-orga­niz­er Emi­ly Gillies. She has a range of beau­ti­ful colours, and one skein of meri­no sport is per­fect for mak­ing one hat. 

I made the hat in blue spruce (pic­tured here, in first pho­to, and in process pho­tos below). The won­der­ful cus­tom veg­an tag is by Mil­lie Mar­ty Co. in Belleville, ON.

The hat can also be made more quick­ly in bulky yarn. I test­ed it while attend­ing the Warm­ing Toron­to event (an after­noon of hang­ing out with great folks at a local pub while mak­ing hats, scarfs and mit­tens for dis­tri­b­u­tion at emer­gency shel­ters in the win­ter). And this hat took about 3.5 hours to make.

Dimen­sion of all three ver­sions (sport, worsted, bulky): 19″ around, 11″ in length with brim unfolded. 

Sug­gest­ed yarn:

Sport — Meri­no Sport by Emi­ly Gillies, 1 skein, 282 yards

Worsted — Patons Clas­sic Wool Worsted, 2 skeins, 210 yards each

Bulky — Patons Shet­land Chunky, 2 skeins, 148 yards each

Pat­tern:

Instruc­tions are for sport weight (worsted and bulky in parenthesis).

The turn­ing ch does not count as a stitch.

The hats are made with slip stitch in black loop only (BLO), made side­ways with short rows for crown shap­ing, then seamed at the back with slip stitch (or sewing).

Cro­chet loose­ly, oth­er­wise it can be dif­fi­cult to get the hook into the slip stitches.

The hat can be made wider with one or two addi­tion­al short rows, and longer with addi­tion­al stitch­es in the begin­ning chain (makes for a wider brim).

Hooks: 
Sport — 5.5 mm
Worsted — 6.5 mm
Bulky — 10 mm

Row 1 (set­up row): ch 55 (40, 33), sl st in sec­ond ch from hook, sl st in each ch to end.

First set of short rows:

Row 2: ch 1, sl st in each st until there is one st left, skip remain­ing st, turn.

Row 3: ch 1, skip first st, sl st in each st to end. 

Repeat rows 2 and 3 six (four, three) more times.

Next row: ch 1, sl st in each st. At this point the piece will look like this.

Con­tin­ue on and sl st into each end of the short row and the space in between each row — 14 (10, 8) stitch­es across the short rows, then sl st in the remain­ing last stitch from row 2. The piece will now look like this.

Next row*: ch 1, sl st in each st to end.

Sec­ond set of short rows:

Row 1: ch 1, sl st in each st until there are 14 (10, 8) stitch­es left in the row, turn.

Row 2: ch 1, sl st in every st to end.

Row 3: ch 1, sl st in every st, then sl st in the next two st in the row marked with * (the row made before row 1 of the sec­ond set of short rows), turn.

Repeat rows 2 and 3 six (four, three) more times.

Next row: ch 1, sl st in every st to end.

Repeat first and sec­ond sets of short rows four more times. Don’t fas­ten off.

Cro­chet seam togeth­er right side out. Turn inside out. Weave yarn through each stitch in crown open­ing, cinch and tied off. Weave in ends. Turn right side out. Fold up brim. Â 

Hap­py crocheting!

 

Note: No incen­tive or com­mis­sion was received for this post. Sim­ply thought it was neat that I could find local arti­sans for both the yarn and cus­tom tags, and want to sup­port indie businesses :)

 

 

slow: mitts

Real­ly enjoy­ing work­ing with slip stitch after mak­ing the lunar new year bam­boo. I like the slow­er pace of work­ing up the fab­ric with this stitch. And I fig­ured it would be a dense enough stitch to make a warm pair of mittens.

I used:

Worsted weight yarn

5.5 mm hook, and a small­er hook for weav­ing in ends

Tapes­try needle

The mit­ten is cro­cheted flat in one piece, fold­ed in half at the thumb, and seamed togeth­er from the tip of the thumb to the cuff edge. The pho­tos that fol­low will help make sense of the construction.

All sl st worked through back loop only (BLO).

Mit­ten mea­sures 9″ long, 4″ across palm, 3″ across wrist, 2″ length of thumb. I have rel­a­tive­ly small hands. The mit­tens can be made larg­er with addi­tion­al ch in the begin­ning and begin­ning ch of thumb, and addi­tion­al rows between rows 7 and 15 

Pat­tern:

Row 1: ch 23, sl st in sec­ond ch from hook, sl st in every ch to end, ch 2 (these two extra ch increase the length by 1 st). 

Row 2: sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st in every st BLO (back loop only) to end.

Row 3: ch 1 (does not count as a stitch), sl st in every st to end, ch 2.

Row 4: repeat row 2.

Row 5: repeat row 3.

Row 6: repeat row 2 (25 st altogether).

Row 7–15: ch 1, sl st in ever st BLO to end.  

Row 16: ch 1, sk first st, sl st in next st and every st to end (skip­ping the first st decreas­es 1 st).

Row 17: ch 1, sl st in every st to end.

Row 18: repeat row 16.

Row 19: repeat row 17.

Row 20: repeat row 16.

Row 21: repeat row 17 (22 st altogether). 

Row 22 (thumb begins): ch 1, sl st in the first 12 st, ch 7, sl st in sec­ond ch from hook, sl st in every ch BLO, sl st in next st on the side of mitten.

Thumb row 1: ch 1, sl st in every st on thumb to end (8 st on thumb)

Thumb row 2: ch 1, sl st in every st on thumb, sl st in next st on the side of mitten.

Repeat thumb rows 1 and 2 three more times. 

Con­tin­ue work­ing 10 rows on thumb, with­out attach­ing the end of the row to the side of the mitten.

Don’t fas­ten off. ch 13, sl st in sec­ond ch on hook, sl st in every ch, work 5 sl st across the base of the 10 rows of them that are not attached to the body of the mit­ten, work 5 sl st into the remain­ing 5 st in the side of the mit­ten. It will end up look­ing like this with the thumb fold­ed in half.

Repeat rows 2 to 21 of mit­ten. I found that it was eas­i­er to fold the thumb in half and pin it togeth­er as I worked along so I don’t get con­fused about which direc­tion I was going.

Fas­ten off. 

Cuff: Attach yarn to edge of cuff (direct­ly oppo­site of where last row end­ed), ch 11, sc in sec­ond ch from hook to end of ch, sl st in next stitch in the mit­ten that looks like a “v”, sl st in next st that looks like a “v”, sc BLO in every sc to end. The mit­ten here is pic­tured upside down with the first cuff row started. 

Con­tin­ue across the edge of the cuff. Here is a close up of the hook point­ing at the mid­dle of the stitch that looks like a “v”.

Attach yarn at the top of thumb. Weave yarn through all the stitch­es in top of thumb, cinch and tie off. Con­tin­ue seam­ing down the thumb and around the mit­ten to edge of cuff. Fas­ten off and weave in ends. 

The mit­tens are actu­al­ly fair­ly quick to work up. If you’re in/near Toron­to, con­sid­er join­ing us in the annu­al Warm­ing Toron­to event on Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 9. We spend an after­noon at at a pub down­town, knit, cro­chet, loom, have a pint, share snacks, chat­ter, and make hats, mitts, scarfs, cowls, etc. for dis­tri­b­u­tion at emer­gency shel­ters over the win­ter months. If one mit­ten is fin­ished at home first, one can def­i­nite­ly fin­ish the pair while hang­ing out for a few hours at the event.  

Stay warm! ❄

renew

Today is the first day of Chi­nese new year. I made this bam­boo as a gift. Pret­ty hap­py with how it turned out. 

I thought bam­boo gen­er­al­ly sym­bol­izes good luck because it’s sold in every Chi­nese shop that sells plants. But with a quick search on the inter­net I learned that it also rep­re­sents renew­al (because of how quick­ly it grows), flexibility/strength, and longevi­ty — so, resilience, tenaciousness. 

“Tena­cious” is a word that I’d like to be described by. I don’t give up, or per­haps more truth­ful­ly I find it hard giv­ing up on things or peo­ple. Some would say that I’m not very good at let­ting go. Oth­er have said I’m stub­born. I’d like to think that I’m tena­cious. But I guess a way for­ward would be to cul­ti­vate flex­i­bil­i­ty, to renew or reori­ent my approach to how I’m tena­cious­ly con­nect­ing to some things. 

Any­way, I’d also say that the cro­chet slip stitch is a very bam­boo-like stitch, because it makes a firm fab­ric and there­fore tena­cious, it is how­ev­er also very flex­i­ble and stretch­able, almost like a knit­ted rib.

Here I’d like to share a loose­ly formed recipe for mak­ing the bam­boo. It’s kind of like free-formed cro­chet­ing, and how tall the plant is depends on the vase you’re using, but there are some basics to it, in case any­one would like to give it a try.

I used:

Caron Sim­ply Soft for the bam­boo stalk because of its sheen

Patons Astra for the yel­low rings and caps

Bernat Super Val­ue for the leaves

5.5 mm hook for the stalk

3.5 mm hook for the rings and caps

Tapes­try needle

Pop­si­cle sticks

Vase with pebbles

Stalks are made with back loop slip stitch (tuto­r­i­al).
With larg­er hook and lighter green, make a chain of desired length. I start­ed with 25 ch for the tallest, and 21 and 15 for the oth­er two. Then sl st BLO until piece is about 1.5″ wide. With­out fas­ten­ing off, sl st to join the seams togeth­er length­wise, mak­ing a long tube (the sl st seam will be on the out­side; the piece won’t be turned inside out after seam­ing). Fas­ten off. 

Rings are made around the stalks with sur­face slip stitch (tuto­r­i­al).
With small­er hook and yel­low, attach yarn where you want the ring to be at the back seam of the stalk. sl st in every stitch in the rows cross­wise (not just the stitch that appears as a “v”, but also the stitch in between the “v“s, so that the rings would pro­trude a bit). Fas­ten off after every ring made and pull the tails inside the stalk.

Caps are made with mag­ic ring (tuto­r­i­al) with 8 sc inside the ring, sl st to join with first sc, then fas­ten off and leave a long tail for sewing. Attach ring to the top of the stalk. 

Leaves may be a lit­tle tricky to explain… I regret not tak­ing progress pho­tos, very sor­ry. It took quite a bit of exper­i­men­ta­tion but I set­tled on this method and I think the results are quite live­ly look­ing. I hope this makes sense.

With small­er hook and dark­er green, ch 5 to 7 (this is the stem you’re sewing to the stalk, so its length depends on how you want to posi­tion the sprig of leaves on the bam­boo), dc in sec­ond ch from hook, *[ch 1, dc in ch just made] two or three times (depend­ing on how long you want the leaf to be), ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st even­ly into the dc’s made ear­li­er (rough­ly 2 sl st per dc), sl st into the last ch of the stem*. At this point you can sl st down every ch of the stem then fas­ten off with tail for sewing, or you can make anoth­er leave by sl st down just a cou­ple of ch on the stem, then repeat * to *, and sl st down every ch of the stem, fas­ten off and leave a tail for sewing.

Sew the leaves to the stalks as desired.

Assem­bly:

The bam­boo stalks are sup­port­ed by pop­si­cle sticks on the inside. I used pop­si­cle sticks because it’s the only thing I can find to use at home. The width of it and the thick­ness of the cro­chet fab­ric takes up the inte­ri­or of the stalks so they don’t need more stuff­ing. I’ve had to con­nect a cou­ple of pop­si­cle sticks togeth­er for the taller two stalks by sim­ply over­lap­ping the ends of the sticks and glu­ing them togeth­er with white glue (hot glue would be a bet­ter choice). 

To deter­mine the lengths of pop­si­cle sticks you need, mea­sure how deeply you want the sticks to extend toward the base of the vase. I would want the sticks to actu­al­ly touch the base of the vase to make sure the sticks don’t wob­ble too eas­i­ly. Deter­mine the length of stick that is stick­ing out of the end of the stalk. It would be the same for all the stalks. Then mea­sure how tall each stick will need to be accord­ing to the length of the stalk. 

Pour a lay­er of peb­bles into the vase. I think small­er stone chips at least for the bot­tom lay­er are bet­ter for sta­bil­i­ty. Insert the stalks and arrange as desired, then pour on more peb­bles. I used dif­fer­ent glass ones on top for interest.

I lat­er added a red rib­bon around the stalk for gift-giv­ing that is not pic­tured because it blocked the bam­boo too much. But that also helps with the stability.

I did­n’t have any oth­er new year dec­o­ra­tions but thank­ful­ly there are emojis 😊🎋

Wish­ing every­one good health and hap­pi­ness in the year of the 🐀

lately

What I’ve been work­ing on after the holidays…

This was some­thing that I start­ed on my trip to Hong Kong. Work­ing on this got me through excru­ci­at­ing­ly long flights and some moments of sad­ness as well as a cold. I actu­al­ly man­aged fin­ish­ing most of the body dur­ing the trip and fin­ished the sleeves after I came back. 

I made up the pat­tern entire­ly and jot­ted down some notes with the hope of shar­ing it some­times in the future… it might not hap­pen till May when the win­ter semes­ter is over, so hope­ful­ly I will still remem­ber what I did…

I used the Red Heart It’s a Wrap that was sent to me from Yarn Cana­da to review. Remem­ber the ghost­ly doily? So I fin­ished the doily AND made this sweater AND still have yarn left for prob­a­bly anoth­er doily. The yardage is incredible!

After school start­ed back again I did­n’t have as much time but I did knit a hat! I’ve loom knit­ted a hat with with this Caron Chunky Cake before but the wide gaps between stitch­es (part of loom knit­ting but I think it’s fix­able, I just don’t know how) make the hat not very warm… so I fig­ure I’ll unrav­el and knit a 2x2 rib one. 

And then I thought it’s a bit too short and the brim not wide enough, so I unrav­eled again and added stripes with the left­over grey sec­tion of the yarn cake.

I think this one is stay­ing knit­ted :D

Have a great week, everyone!

this week’s awesome sweaters

Cozy win­ter projects :)

Real­ly like the garter pan­el on the side of the sleeves and looks like a begin­ner’s make I can han­dle :) By Tin Can Knits.

Weeee! An alpaca hol­i­day sweater! *heart-eyes x1000* By Joy of Motion.

I think this would be a per­fect project to learn round yoke colour-work sweaters. By Sewrel­la.

I love every­thing about this sweater — the raglan detail, the sim­ple design, and the fun­nel neck. By Eleven Hand­made in issue 108 of Inside Cro­chet (fol­low link on Rav­el­ry).

Love espe­cial­ly the pops of teal around the edges! And the tri­an­gles of course. By Amy Gun­der­son in the lat­est issue of Knit­ty!

Hap­py win­ter stitch­ing! :D

yarn elfing

If you have been jour­ney­ing with me on this blog, you might recall that I like to call hol­i­day gift-mak­ing “elf­ing”. It is that time of the year again for us busy elves! Although I’m not a very pro­duc­tive elf this year… Not much yarn-craft­ing hap­pen­ing, just paper-writ­ing… sup­pose those count as gifts for my professors…

It is also the time of year when we think about mak­ing for those beyond our own cir­cles of fam­i­lies and friends who can real­ly use our gifts of crafti­ness with yarn. The nice folks at Yarn Cana­da are part­ner­ing with Bernat Yarn to give away yarn for indi­vid­u­als and groups who craft for a good cause! Do you and your friends make scarves and hats for peo­ple to find? Or win­ter gears for shel­ters? Or soft pros­thet­ics for breast can­cer sur­vivors? Or prac­tice oth­er kinds of yarn-kind­ness? Check out this page on Yarn Canada’s web­site for more details on how to enter this give-away for a good cause! 

In the mean­while, here are some awe­some ideas I found for the yarn-craft­ing elves…

These very cute cup cozies are loom knit­ted on a 24-peg loom. It’s a paid pat­tern on Rav­el­ry but the how-to video is free on Tuteate’s Youtube chan­nel (which have excel­lent and real­ly well-made loom knit projects!). By Mireia Marcet on Rav­el­ry.

 

Absolute­ly stun­ning granny square by Kirsten Hol­loway Designs.

 

A free pat­tern on We Are Knit­ters and it’s an amigu­ru­mi alpaca! :D

 

An ins­ta-grat­i­fi­ca­tion wool-craft, all you need is some tufts of wool, some pipe clean­ers, some poms, and some love. Bril­liant. From Hand­made Char­lotte.

 

Hap­py craft­ing, everyone!

 

 

casper-go-round

Yikes! I haven’t writ­ten for over a month! I don’t think that that’s ever hap­pened since I start­ed this blog in 2010! Oh man. It’s been very, very busy with school and work, just get­ting a bit of breath­ing space after fin­ish­ing a mid-term paper today… And! We North Amer­i­cans get an extra hour thanks to day­light sav­ing! So guess what I did with that extra hour?

Block­ing! :D

The real­ly nice folks at Yarn Cana­da sent me a cou­ple of cakes of Red Heart It’s a Wrap quite a while ago to try out and review, and I recent found a per­fect pat­tern for it — it calls for a thread/lace weight cot­ton, it’s a rel­a­tive­ly quick project, and it’s some­thing that I think my BFF will real­ly like…

A ghost­ly doily! :O

I like to call it the Casper-go-round — it’s got the per­fect Casper head-shape!

My BFF loves all things Hal­loween, so I’m think­ing she will enjoy this even when it’s not Hal­loween. (and she does­n’t read my blog, so she won’t know this is com­ing her way. shhh.) This bril­liant (free!) pat­tern is called “Boo” by Mar­sha Glass­ner on Rav­el­ry. The pat­tern calls for a lighter thread, but for the Red Heart yarn I used a 2.5 mm hook.

With 50/50 cot­ton and acrylic con­tent, the yarn was smooth and soft to work with and has great drape. While I’m try­ing my hands on it with the doily I’m think­ing it would be great for a garment.

It has excep­tion­al yardage — 1100 yards per cake (for under $12 CAD!). I used less than half of the cen­tre beige sec­tion for a 13″ doily, with the “West­ern” colour­way because I’m par­tial to mut­ed colours, but the yarn also offers oth­er colour com­bi­na­tions that are more bright and cheer­ful. It would be great for shawls, cardi­gans, even a tod­dler’s dress, with all that yardage!

Because it is a lace pat­tern it was nec­es­sary to block, which I’m not too famil­iar with. But I did get some tips from a knit­ting cir­cle I was a part of in the sum­mer, so I gave that a try, and I thought it would also be a good way to test out a dif­fer­ent aspect of the yarn for this review. 

So first, I soaked a hand tow­el and wrung out the excess water. Then I rolled the doily in the tow­el and added more water to it, then care­ful­ly pressed the excess water out (but care­ful not to wring, I was told). Then I laid the doily on a fold­ed large tow­el (the plushi­est I have, because I don’t have block­ing mats), and stretched and pinned it to shape.

It only took sev­er­al hours to dry. Because of the cot­ton con­tent of the yarn, it most­ly held its shape after unpin­ning. It did start to spring back a tiny bit, I guess because of its acrylic con­tent (or maybe I was stretch­ing it too much), but I think for this pat­tern it’s fine for it to shape-shift a lit­tle :) I was think­ing if it con­tin­ues to lose shape I can also press it with an iron under a tow­el, which I had done with acrylics before. 

Per­fect under­neath a can­dy dish! Stay Puft would be proud :D

With the rest of the yarn I’m going to start on a cro­chet pullover pat­tern that I’ve been eye­ing for a long time. It’s going to take a while… but will sure­ly share when it’s done!

Be sure to check out Yarn Cana­da’s huge selec­tions of yarn, I always think it’s pret­ty incred­i­ble that they offer free ship­ping on orders over $45 or flat rate of $5 (with­in Cana­da). It’s also pret­ty con­ve­nient when I have such short­age of time these days… too convenient…

Hap­py November!

 

*Dis­claimer: I received prod­uct from Yarn Cana­da to write a review of the prod­uct; the opin­ions expressed on this blog are entire­ly my own.

 

 

fab kimono

A quick kimono style cardigan/shrug I pulled togeth­er to wear to my cous­in’s wed­ding this week­end :) Can’t come up with a more poet­ic name, but thought it looks pret­ty fab (if I do say so myself), so fab kimono it is :D

I had quite a bit of left­over Red Heart Unfor­get­table after mak­ing a scarf as a gift, so I bought anoth­er skein to make this. It’s cropped length because I was going to wear this long black dress and want­ed some con­trasts in style. But it’s easy to make longer if you’d like.

It’s cro­cheted from side to side, mak­ing both front and back pieces at the same time (so there’s no seam­ing in the mid­dle!). It is then fold­ed in half with just 2 short sides to seam at the end.

With autumn in the air I think this is a good lay­er­ing piece for wear­ing with sum­mer dress, t‑shirt, long sleeve shirt, or even but­toned up col­lared shirt.

Size: 

Length (shoul­der to low­er edge) — 17″

Around — 60″

Gauge:

16 st = 4.5″

I used:

3 skeins of Red Heart Unfor­get­table in Dragonfly

6.5 mm hook

Tapes­try needle

Small­er hook to weave in ends with

Pat­tern:

Left front/back:

Row 1: fdc 126 (see instruc­tion for foun­da­tion dou­ble cro­chet or fdc here)

To increase length, add 16 fdc for every 4.5″.

Row 2: ch 3 (counts as 1 dc), dc in next 5 dc, ch 2, sk 2 dc, *dc in next 6 dc, ch 2, sk 2 dc* repeat from * to * to end, dc in last 6 dc. 

Repeat row 2 until piece mea­sures 15″ (approx. 26 rows).

Next row: dc in every dc and 2 dc in every 2 ch sp. 

Split right front:

Next row: ch 3, dc in next 62 dc, fdc 63 and leave the remain­ing dc from pre­vi­ous row unworked.

Repeat row 2 of left front/back until piece mea­sures 15″ from split. 

Last row: dc in every dc and 2 dc in every 2 ch sp. Fas­ten off.

Assem­bly:

Fold piece in half so that the split is per­pen­dic­u­lar to the fold line. The fold line will be the shoulders. 

Sew side seam togeth­er by attach­ing yarn at the low­er edge, match­ing stitch­es on front and back pieces, sew togeth­er the next 30 dc. Fas­ten off. Repeat on the oth­er side seam. Weave in ends.

Wear and be fabulous!