For folks who’s been vis­it­ing this blog over the past decade since it start­ed in 2010, thank you very much for jour­ney­ing with me. For a long time, this was my home, where I could feel safe by return­ing to some­thing I love that is dif­fer­ent from what I do for a liv­ing. I’ve met some very car­ing peo­ple and made friends through this blog. The crochet/knitting com­mu­ni­ty was kind to me.

I under­stand that the pan­dem­ic has been weigh­ing on every­one, and craft­ing is per­haps some­thing that peo­ple are try­ing to use to de-stress, and per­haps peo­ple are try­ing to use my pat­tern for that purpose. 

Late­ly I have been receiv­ing an increas­ing­ly num­ber of com­ments that are esca­lat­ing in the lev­el of frus­tra­tion, blame, and aggres­sion. This place is becom­ing a source of stress and is no longer safe.

I’m impact­ed by this pan­dem­ic too. I work in the men­tal health sec­tor, I teach, and I’m a full-time stu­dent. I have been putting out pat­terns entire­ly for free for the past 10 years. I’m how­ev­er not a pro­fes­sion­al design­er. I will not have the time or ener­gy to share any more pat­tern in the fore­see­able future. I tried to be respon­sive and help peo­ple with my old pat­terns, but I no longer have the capac­i­ty to do so. I cer­tain­ly am not able to con­tin­ue receiv­ing aggres­sive messages.

In order to make this place safe for me, I’m leav­ing the pat­terns on the blog for now, but I’ve turned off the com­ments on all of my posts. If folks can­not under­stand or fol­low my pat­terns, I sug­gest vis­it­ing Rav­el­ry, where there are thou­sands of oth­er won­der­ful pat­terns made by help­ful design­ers who are much, much more skill­ful than me. 

In the mean­time, I con­tin­ue to craft. If you’d like to take a look at what I’m mak­ing with oth­er design­ers’ won­der­ful pat­terns, please feel free to find me on Insta­gram.

Take care, everyone.

 

I’ve always want­ed to make a granny stitch sweater. I wear the side­ways sweater a lot in the fall and win­ter for lay­er­ing. The open stitch pat­tern makes it not too warm for indoor heat­ing but the thick­ness of cro­chet makes it warm enough for the amount of time I spend out­doors in pub­lic tran­sit or walk­ing from one place to anoth­er in the city. So I want­ed a sim­i­lar sweater but dif­fer­ent, and granny stitch would have the sim­i­lar effects.

The pat­terns I came across are usu­al­ly worked flat with the front, back, and sleeve pieces seamed togeth­er, like this one, and this one, which look fab­u­lous. But I want­ed to make one that is cro­cheted top-down and in the round so that it incor­po­rates the granny cor­ner stitch­es in the yoke as raglan increases.  

I found this video tuto­r­i­al on Oana’s cro­chet chan­nel, which is bril­liant, espe­cial­ly the way it start­ed with the foun­da­tion “arch­es” made of ch’s and dc’s. There’s no writ­ten pat­tern; it’s more of a for­mu­la to make what fits and try on as you go. I’ve made some mod­i­fi­ca­tions for worsted weight yarn and larg­er hooks. If you’d like to try doing some­thing sim­i­lar, you’d have to watch Oana’s video first for the fol­low­ing to make sense.

The fin­ished mea­sure­ments of my sweater:

Bust: 36″ around
Arm open­ing: 14″ around
Sleeve length: 17.5″ from under­arm
Length: 18.5“
Neck width: 8.5“
Neck depth: 3″ 

I used about 1200 yards of worsted weight yarn and an 8 mm hook, as well as 6.5 mm hook for edgings. 

My mod­i­fi­ca­tions:

Yoke foun­da­tion chain (with larg­er hook): The sweater begins with a foun­da­tion chain of “arch­es” or loops made of ch’s and dc’s. I made 6 arch­es for the back of neck, 2 for each of the sleeves, and 4 for the raglan increas­es, and omit­ted ones in the front, so it’d make a smoother neck­line. So alto­geth­er I start­ed with 14 arches.

Note 1: I had to take away some stitch­es in the raglan increase, so that it is [2 dc, ch 1, 2 dc], because it was start­ing to buck­le with the orig­i­nal [3 dc, ch 1, 3 dc] combination.

Note 2: I turn at the end of each round.

Row 1: first raglan increase (ch 3, 2 dc, ch 1, 2 dc), 3 dc in next 2 arch­es, raglan increase (2 dc, ch 1, 2 dc), 3 dc in next 6 arch­es, raglan increase (as pre­vi­ous one), 3 dc in next 2 arch­es, last raglan increase (2 dc, ch 1, 3 dc).

Rows 2–3: increase at the start of the row as per the video (ch 3, 3 dc between first and sec­ond dc of the row), then work raglan increas­es in ch 1 spaces, and granny stitch­es across, then increase at the end of the row (4 dc between last dc and begin­ning ch 3 chain of last row).

Row 4: increase at the start of the row (ch 3, 2 dc between first and sec­ond dc of the row), then work raglan increas­es in ch 1 spaces, and granny stitch­es across, then increase at the end of the row (3 dc between last dc and begin­ning ch 3 chain of last row).

I then join the front with 3 arch­es, so that now the yoke is joined in the round.

I worked 5 more rounds around the yoke, then joined the front and back at the under­arm. Then worked until the piece is 18″ in length from shoulder.

For the sleeves, I start­ed with join­ing yarn in the stitch at under­arm (where the front and back joined), then worked 2 rounds even, then worked a decrease round.

For the decrease round, I did­n’t fol­low Oana’s video for sleeves, which involves a decrease row of sc stitch­es. I want­ed the entire sweater to be granny stitch­es, so here’s what I did.

Sleeve decrease round: ch 3, 2 dc in same space, [2 dc in next sp, 2 dc in next sp], work granny stitch around, sl st in top of begin­ning ch to join.

Round after decrease: ch 3, 2 dc in same space, work granny stitch around, until the group of stitch­es in [] of pre­vi­ous row, skip the 4 dc in [] (i.e. treat it as one group of granny stitch), work granny stitch in next sp to end, sl st in top of begin­ning ch to join. 

After the first decrease round, I worked decrease round every 6th row three times, then worked 3 rounds even, then worked anoth­er decrease round, and a final round.

For all the edg­ing I switched to a 6.5 mm hook and worked 3 rounds of sc stitch­es around the neck open­ing, cuffs and bot­tom of the sweater. Gen­er­al­ly I work 3 sc in each ch 3 space, and one sc in each dc around the cuffs. 

And that’s it, no seam­ing. And It’s a very quick make, I fin­ished it in a few days. I’d like to try mak­ing anoth­er one with dif­fer­ent colours in the yoke so the raglan increase stitch­es stand out more. 

Hope 2020 brings you many good things ♥

For some­thing dif­fer­ent under the tree, make a glow­ing igloo vil­lage! From Miss Red Fox.

 

Socks knit­ted on 2 nee­dles! I’m intrigued by its origa­mi-like con­struc­tion. From Zoom Yum­my.

 

Sweet mini teacup orna­ments, for the tea lovers in our lives. From Thirsty for Tea.

 

Sim­ply fluffy yarn wreath, from A Beau­ti­ful Mess.

 

Also some­thing dif­fer­ent under the tree — a donut tree skirt! And no sew! From Cur­bly.

 

A cozy plaid slouchy hat, pat­tern from Whis­tle & Ivy.

 

Cheers! :D

 

 

Remem­ber­ing Kathreen Rick­et­son, whose blog, Whipup, was one of the first blogs I fol­lowed, whose cre­ative ener­gy inspired and moti­vat­ed me to cre­ate, whose gen­eros­i­ty and desire to increase expo­sure for fel­low crafters con­tributed so much to growth of indi­vid­ual arti­sans and the craft­ing com­mu­ni­ty as a whole. I’ve had the priv­i­lege of exchang­ing a few emails with Kathreen, when I timid­ly sent her one of my first tuto­ri­als, and she agreed to share it on her wide­ly pop­u­lar blog. I was so excit­ed, so encour­aged by her kind words. My heart weeps over the trag­ic acci­dent that took the lives of Kathreen and her part­ner, Rob. An account has been set up for their chil­dren, Otil­i­ja and Orlan­do. Details are post­ed here for those who’d like to contribute.

 

 

Lots of snow over the past week of the hol­i­days. A love­ly win­ter won­der­land here in the neighbourhood…

Beau­ti­ful snow­fall on Christ­mas day! :D

Some snowflake Christ­mas cards I made in addi­tion to the Christ­mas tree ones. They’re made by scrib­bling on cof­fee fil­ters with wash­able mark­ers and then spray­ing water on them. Super fun, and the effect is quite magical-looking.

Will post more hol­i­day craft pho­tos in 2013, which will be here in just a few days :D Wish­ing every­one a hap­py new year!

 

Hap­py Christ­mas, everybody!