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.
