Saturday, September 30, 2006

Sweet




My first crochet-along, and my first real sweater ever.

After some trial and error I followed the template for the Sweet sweater at www.crochetme. com--starting with 7" for the back of the neck--to figure out the base chain length and where to increase for the raglan shoulder seams. Then I reduced the back by a few stitches, and increased the sides by a few stitches to accommodate my long upper body.

Even so, I had to shift the raglan seam increases towards the center body a bit as I went. Then after joining at the bottom of the V neck, I did some dart seam decreases front and back to keep it nicely fitted.

Most of it is in double crochet so far. Kinda boring, but the increases went at the right pace. I always have a problem with the seam wandering when I crochet in the round, so after joining I started to spiral. To keep the beginning of the spiral from looking too funky, I did the first round with single crochet (sc) and then the second round with half-double-crochet (hdc). Then back to dc. It's still a little funky with the plain yarn, but oh well.

I'm also using pretty cheap yarn--Soft by Red Heart, soft acyrlic with nice sheen but probably will pill terribly. But I figure I should finish one sweater (all those balls of unused yarn from aborted projects!) before I allow myself nicer yarn.

I plan to add another color to make long , somewhat flared sleeves with embellishments and perhaps a color block waist band. The bottom will flare out a bit too, for a nice hourglas look I hope.

3 comments:

Amy O'Neill Houck said...

It's looking so pretty--I love the changes you made. What's the yarn your using?

Dawn said...

It's fitted so well and the sleeves are laying so nicely, I love it! I don't find it boring at all as the plain yarn really lets the stitch show. Sweet!

Rina said...

I have no idea when these comments got posted--kinda new at this. Thanks, Amy and Dawn. Amy, I used Soft by Red Heart. I think it's new; it's kind of similar to TLC Lustre worsted which has been discontinued.