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Pearl’s Cardigan

The next project for Me Me Me Month is crochet: Pearl’s Cardigan (click here for the free pattern). This was a crochet-along on the Lionbrand blog last year. I bought my yarn mid-way through the crochet-along, but was in pregnancy nesting mode, so it wasn’t a high priority on my to-do list.

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I naively included the yarn (Moda Vera Chantilly – 70% Acrylic 30% Milk from Spotlight) and instructions in my hospital bag for when Little Miss arrived, and I did pull it out once while I was there, but then put it straight back – way too much concentration required!

I picked the project back-up when Little Miss was a month or so old, doing a row or two a night before passing out in exhaustion. It was a slow process, with a lot of unravelling. This project was more advanced than anything I’ve crocheted before and after doing a couple of rows, I realised I was doing some of the stitches wrong, I’d never worked stitches in groups or worked over a chain rather than in the actual stitches and it took me a few goes (and a bit of Googling) to work out why it didn’t look the right!

The cardigan is worked from the top down so it was really easy to try it on and adjust the pattern for size as I went along. I also decided to just make capped sleeves, rather than long sleeves.

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It was also the first item that needed blocking. I dampened it under the tap and then pinned it to a towel and left it lying on our spare bed for a couple of days to dry (it took a while with the humidity here in summer).

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I made a sash for the belt from some cream satin purchased from my local chain fabric store.

I love how the cardigan turned out, except for at the top of the side slits. That pokes out a bit and looks a bit strange. After crocheting such a nice piece of clothing, I’m keen to buy nicer (i.e. more expensive) wool for my next clothing project. I feel like I’ve earned some crocheting stripes!

7 Comments

  1. I’m so impressed! I wouldn’t even consider crocheting a whole item of clothing for myself. Actually I wouldn’t even consider an item of clothing at all. My crochet skills are very limited. But yours clearly are great because that looks so good and you even adjusted the sleeve as you went along. Impressed! Really!

  2. This cardigan was quite forgiving as it doesn’t have any shape to it – the shape is provided by the belt, so once I worked out how the clusters were supposed to go, it was fairly simple (no increases or decreases). I also discovered that blocking does wonders for making it look right, making the stitches more even and hiding tension variations. The crochet-along really helped with tips about sizing and adjusting it, including about the sleeves (although all I did was stop when they were how I liked them – not exactly rocket science!).

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