Vegan knitter, printmaker and book geek.

Australian summers aren’t known for being very conducive to working with bulky or overly warm yarn, so it tends to be a good time to pick up yarn for cheap. I recently managed to score several skeins of a cute little cotton/ acrylic yarn appropriately named ‘Beetle‘ for a mere dollar per 50g ball. Needless to say, I bought everything they had in two sweet shades of green. The open weave of this mesh pattern and the large hook meant I only used a little under 5 skeins for this quick fix of a dress. Score!

Start to Finish: A week and a half.
Yarn: Moda Vera Beetle, 50% cotton/ 50% acrylic
Hook: 7mm
Pattern: Prep School by Doris Chan.
I love Doris Chan’s approach to pattern-writing, and I’ve found that in the crochet world a seamless, intuitive (for me) kind of pattern is kind of hard to come by. I’ve ordered her book Everyday Crochet, and am eagerly awaiting its arrival.

Notes: I didn’t have the right sized hook, so my gauge was much larger than that in the pattern. I worked through the pattern as-is (it’s worked top-down) until joining for the neckline, and discovered that it was going to be way too loose without some tweaking. So I ripped it back to the shoulder (leaving the top back panel intact) and made up my own little scoop neckline. Once it fit around the bust, I just keep working joined rounds in double crochet until I was happy with the length! It’s not flash, but it was quick and easy and a reasonably successful experiment. Oh, and I fudged a weird little ruffle trim which is cuter in real life than in the pics.

Ravelled here.

Start to Finish: August – October 2011
Yarn: Berroco Comfort
Needles: 4mm/ US size 6
Method: Seamless saddle shoulder (from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Without Tears).

Notes: I ran out of yarn at the neckline (I had wanted to do 2″ of ribbing to finish off) so I bound off and used the remaining yarn to graft the underarms and crochet around the neckline (in half double crochet). Then I used some Panda Magnum Soft 8ply in an almost-matching shade of green to put in the zip/per. I used the excellent Knitting Daily tutorial to make loops along the zip/per edge, then joined them to the front edge stitches using the 3-needle bindoff (although technically I only used two circular needles, picking up a stitch from each edge stitch and knitting it together with a zip/per stitch as I went). This is such a great technique and I loved the finished result–I’ll be using this in all of my cardigans from now on. The Staghorn cable is really effective and easy to memorise, and the saddle shoulder method is heaps of fun. Apart from running out of yarn and the end result being a little too close-fitting for my liking, I really love everything about this sweater.

Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease (50% cotton/ 50% acrylic; worsted weight).
Pattern: A hodgepodge of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Seamless Set-in Sleeve Sweater and her Seamless Saddle Shoulder Sweater. Sleeves were worked in the round to the underarms, body in one piece to the underarms, then joined together. I worked simultaneous set-in sleeves to begin with, then at the shoulders decided to work a saddle. I love the way it turned out, even though me changing my mind at the last minute meant the yoke was definitely too long (see the crazy-long sleeves?). The method for making the saddle shoulder is such a piece of cake, so simple and elegant that it’s my new method of choice. I’ve started another–in green–and it will be a saddle shoulder, although not as interesting without a fancy stitch pattern on the sleeves to carry across.
Verdict: This is the most wearable garment I’ve made for myself to date. The torso length is perfect, I love the neckline, I learnt to put in a zip (which I will be doing again), the cable texture pleases me no end, and apart from the too-long yoke and sleeves (as mentioned above, entirely my fault) the fit suits me perfectly. It’s really comfy and I couldn’t be happier!