Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Wearable Circles

One of the things I love about crochet is that it can be so easy to make very intricate looking patterns.
first circular cardigan

 About a year ago, I made this circular cardigan for myself.  I chose this because I really liked the floaty and flared look of the picture on the source pattern.  I also had two large skeins of fine merino wool in these gorgeous autumn colours that were just waiting for the right project.  There should be sleeves on it too, but I ran out of yarn and then got lazy.  Still, it goes really well with lots of stuff and dresses up very simple outfits.

At the time, I'd never followed a crochet chart before and it took me a bit of time to get my head around this format.  I much prefer a chart to a written pattern now, so clearly I'm even more visual than I thought...

Anyway, I was getting heaps of compliments on this circular cardigan, not least because it looks very complicated.  (In truth, it was incredibly simple to make.  Naturally, I rarely admit that!)  I wore it to Christmas Dinner last year and my sister-in-law was super impressed that I'd made it myself.  So, I decided I'd make her one for her birthday.  Then my own sister got wind of that and insisted that I make one for her too, please!
circular cardigan for SIL

I decided that I'd try out a couple of different patterns this time.  For my sister-in-law, I chose a fine merino wool in a blue/purple combination and followed this pattern.  Again, I didn't bother with the sleeves.  Here is the finished product.

I'm still working on the one for my sister.  She's also a fan of autumnal colours, but brighter than my preference.  I found a lovely wool that goes through the colours of the rainbow, but with a kind of darker autumn tinge and has a silver thread running through it.

I had progressed quite far, following this pattern, but I decided that I didn't really like the granny square-ishness of how it was turning out, so I ripped it all back and started again.  I've gone back to the original pattern and I think that the colours are working really well with the open work.  I'm much happier with how this looks.  Here's a couple of work in progress pics so you can at least see the colours.  You can see that this wool  is chunkier than the other two, so I'll probably have to adapt the pattern to position the armholes.  I may even stretch to sleeves this time!

abandoned project
project in progress


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