A crochet blanket that I can wear

I'm not an accomplished crocheter. I can crochet, but not well. My tension has issues and I can't yet read charts. Overall, I prefer knitted fabric compared to crochet, so I haven't had much motivation to improve.

And yet - two of the most-used handmade objects in my house are my crochet scrap blankets. I have one for the sofa, and one for the office chair, and in the winter I basically always have one or the other draped over my lap or around my shoulders. 

They were both made of 'free' (leftover) yarn and were quick and simple to make so I don't feel precious about them getting stained or worn out. And there is something marvelous about items crocheted from fingering-weight yarn - just chunky enough without being too heavy.

For a long time, I've pondered how I can go from 'blanket draped over my shoulders' to 'perfect relaxing-at-home cardigan'. Last year, I gathered some leftover sock yarn in autumnal colours (mostly Drops Fabel along with some others) and started to crochet some oddly shaped rectangles, aiming to make the blanket-igan of my dreams.

At some point, the rectangles got shoved into a box onto the shelf, life moved on, and I forgot about that project but I didn't forget about my dream. Every time I threw my blanket over my shoulders, I knew there had to be a better way.

Enter: Crochet YouTube, and the granny stitch hexagon cardigans that have become ubiquitous.

(It's very strange, returning to crafter social media after several years off. There are designers I've never heard of becoming total juggernauts. There is a stockinette hat at the top of Ravelry's pattern list. Everyone is adding mohair to everything and everything has 10 inches of positive ease. It's a culture shock.)

If you haven't seen these, the idea is simple but ingenious: it's a granny square with an extra side, which allows the wibbly hexagon to fold into an L shape. Make two of these and join them together into a T shape for an easy and quick cardigan or pullover.

People are casting these on in worsted weight yarn and finishing them in a week. Mine was finer but still flew by in about 3 weeks of not-particularly-concentrated work.

It works beautifully with stripes and it looks so very handmade - which is part of the appeal. Crochet is getting trendy, and this is a garment that shouts I made this.

I loved making this. It was easy, it kept my hands busy, and the semi-random stripes of sock yarn were extremely satisfying. And, since this is a cardigan for home, I didn't worry a bit over how it would fit - I only worried about how comfy it would be.

With this simple shape come limits in the amount of customisation. All sides of the hexagon grow at the same rate which assumes a certain proportion for sleeve circumference, sleeve length, and body width & length.

Many talented crocheters have come up with various solutions for these problems - Sarah Maker's version was most helpful to me for exploring the different options. Ultimately, I decided not to taper or lengthen the sleeves, and only added a few rows to the centre back and three rounds of border after I joined the two sides.

I did add cuffs to the sleeves - rather than working crochet ribbing, I picked up the stitches and added k1p1 rib and a tubular bind-off. IMO this is the ideal finishing touch, and I actually love the balloon sleeve effect.

So did I achieve my goals? Well, this cardigan has been living on the back of my office chair ever since I finished it, and I am rarely seen on a Teams call without it! It is my perfect crochet blanket, as a cardigan.

~Joyuna

How to knit a sweater in 10 days

1. Dive deep into stash. Way deep.

I bought this yarn in 2008. It's been sitting in storage, half-knitted into a cardigan, for well over a decade. It's made a transatlantic move with me.

The cardigan it was originally destined to be - Sylph Cardigan from Interweave Knits - was never going to get finished. Flounces are just not for me anymore. But let's take a moment to admire the eyelet ribbing and the subtle twisted stitch columns - there's a lot to like about this pattern, even though it isn't for me anymore. 

I gave it the Marie Kondo "thank you, goodbye" and ripped it all out. 

The yarn is Knit Picks Elegance, 70% baby alpaca, 30% silk.

It's been a long time since I knit anything big with alpaca. Alpaca blended with wool, absolutely - I love the softness and warmth it adds. But not on its own. It's too loose, too heavy, too unpredictable. To me, the bounciness of sheep's wool is the perfect pairing to the stretch of knitting. I want my stitches to spring back into shape. Alpaca is soft, fuzzy, lovely... and saggy.

(I have a woven blanket made of 100% alpaca which is one of the most lovely things I own. The weaving has so much structure, letting the alpaca have all the softness and drape it wants without compromising on shape. I do believe some fibres are better for some crafts than others.)

So I would not have bought a new sweater quantity of an alpaca-silk blend. And yet, here I have it. And yes, the sleeves stretched out several inches after blocking, but that makes it even cosier, with the cuffs riding down over my hands.

2. Embrace Betwixtmas.

I didn't take a lot of time off work during the holidays, but I still had plenty of time to myself and a lot of dark evenings. I brought it to Christmas Day and I worked on it continually. Miles of stockinette went down easy. Somehow, the sleeves finished themselves before I could even blink.

3. Find beauty in simplicity. 

The pattern is All Day Everyday by Nadia Crétin-Léchenne - a baggy, drop shoulder, straight up and down, simple but very effective design with a few tiny cables down the front for interest.

An open cardigan with no buttons (or button-bands) to worry about - I know I will get plenty of wear out of it, being able to throw it on without thinking.

It's knit all in one piece from the top down, and the cables are crossed every right side row, so there was very little to keep track of and very few ways to mess it up.

4. Fall slightly in love.

Even if the alpaca turns out to have been a mistake, it was gorgeous to knit with. Watching the cushy fabric grow beneath my hands was addictive.

It really feels luxurious to wear - plush and fuzzy, drapey and very warm. The sunny colour - a medium yellow that's not too bright, and light, but not pastel - cheers me on through the winter greys.

5. Follow instructions, but trust your instincts.

I first cast on a size with 5" of ease - and very quickly ripped it out and cast on again two sizes smaller.

The designer recommends 10-20cm (4-8") of positive ease. But I knew, personally, I wouldn't be happy with that.

The alpaca will grow, and I don't feel good in clothes I'm drowning in. I made a few more modifications based on knowing my body and what I like to wear. But I resisted the urge to add shaping to the body or anything else too fancy. 

I added my own custom sleeve shaping which I'm very happy with - increasing the armhole height, it just skims my large upper arms, then the decreases ramp up from the elbow while keeping extra ease around the wrists in a way that I think is very flattering.

6. Add some drama.

I really thought I was going to run out of yarn. The pattern called for 1500yds, while I had 1200 of a long-discontinued yarn. By all accounts, I should be 3 full balls short. 

But I decided to carry on: The design assumed 10-20cm of positive ease, and alpaca will stretch, and I'll embrace the cropped look if I need to. And I can unravel my swatch.

I didn't need to unravel my swatch. But something about the added pressure, wanting to see how far I could get, urged me on row after row. 

I knit the body down to the armholes - then I knit each sleeve - and then, carefully counting each centimeter, I knit as much of the body as I could.

So I finished with 11 balls and 10 days. Knitting more than 50g per day. It's a decent length - I might have added an extra inch or two if I had had the yarn, but it's definitely not cropped!

7. Get excited for the future. 

Now that I know I can go from idea to finished garment in two weeks, so many possibilities open up to me. 

I have at least 5 sweater quantities of yarn in my stash - I rarely get through them because a sweater in my size feels like a mammoth undertaking. And yet! Ten days. It's possible. I can fill my wardrobe with beautiful sweaters.

(PS: Happy 17th anniversary to the blog.)

~Joyuna

You are the boss of the yarn.

Remember: You control the yarn, not the other way around.

I bought a ball of self-striping yarn - I can't remember when I picked it up, but it was obviously an impulse purchase. It's Opal Schafpate in the colourway Kate.

Schafpate is a wonderful sock yarn - I've knit a pair of socks in it before and I love them. It's got the sturdiness I expect from a no-nonsense German sock yarn, and just a bit more softness. The wool comes from a German flock and the project is specifically aimed at supporting local shepherds - more on the Schafpate project here.

There have been dozens of colourways of Schafpate - they seem to drop like seasonal fashion, passing quickly in and out of the range. And they're all self-striping 'faux Fair Isle' style, for better or for worse. I happen to like this yarn so much that I would be very happy to have a range of solid colours to supplement the striping ones, but ah well.

So here is the manufacturer image of the yarn I bought:

The purple? Love it. The green? Love it. The gentle, pale gradient between the two? LOVE IT.

...The bitty bits of blue and white speckles? Do not love it.

This ball sat in purgatory in my stash for a long, long time. Why was I so foolish to buy a yarn with a fatal flaw? I knew I could never love socks that interrupted a beautiful colour gradation with those loud, rude speckles.

And then I remembered that this is not buying a whole sock out of a catalogue: This is knitting. I control the yarn, the yarn does not control me.

I started knitting, and when I hit a section with speckles, I simply cut it out. Then I wound a new ball of the colours I wanted.

This had the fun side-effect of parcelling my yarn out into pre-defined repeats, allowing me to pre-wind the balls for the second sock and know exactly how much yarn I'll need.

And now I'm knitting socks that I love. All is as it should be.

~Joyuna

Oh no, I love it

Do you ever do something in hopes that you'll be proven wrong? That you'll find out that doing things the hard way isn't worth it after all?

I cast on a sweater on 2.5mm needles. I've knit sweaters out of tiny yarn before - I've made a laceweight cardigan, but it was tiny yarn on great big needles for an airy wisp of a sweater. Not this. This is substantial fabric, not a hole in sight.

Tiny, tiny stitches. Delicate little stitches in stockinette and twisted rib. Over 300 stitches per row.

Reader, I'm heartbroken to say that I adore it.

I don't really wear most of my handknits. Even DK feels too chunky most of the time. I overheat, or the thick fabric gets in my way, or it doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of my outfit. Whatever the reason, I just don't wear them that often. (Not never...but not often enough, and not as often as they deserve.)

I'm ashamed to say that most of the knitwear I've been wearing the past few winters has been shop-bought. So thin and versatile!

I had stashed away some seriously beautiful sock yarn. I say sock yarn, but it doesn't have the qualities I like in a sock yarn. It's too soft, gently spun, squishy. The ball begs to be petted. I can't see it as socks, but it's a beautiful yarn nonetheless - the sadly discontinued Regia Angora Merino. The colour is a rich purple, a saturated yet dark aubergine. It's soft and smooth with just a tiny haze of bunny hairs sticking out.

It's the kind of yarn that I am happy to be running through my fingers for a few hundred thousand stitches.

So I have a special yarn, and I have a lovely pattern (simple, elegant, with just enough interest - Oolong by Laura Chau), and I have a light but warm cardigan to look forward to.

Sure, it's a little disheartening to knit for an hour and a half and only have 2cm to show for it... but if I can just sustain my momentum a little while longer, keep admiring the fabric, keep petting the skein, I'll get through it and I'll have a sweater I can actually add to my everyday wardrobe!

~Joyuna