Little Purl of the Orient

Bring on the Brice

My first successful and wearable crochet garment! Here's the Brice Cardigan from Bouton D'or Hors Serie No. 12. I used 5 balls of Filatura Di Crosa Dolce Amore 100% cotton yarn and size 3mm crochet hook for the body and 2.5mm for the border. I'm happy with how it turns out. It fits Ji Yuan and I think it can still fit her next spring as I added two more rows to the sleeves at the last moment. The pieces are joined using the crochet method and surprisingly the seams are very flat, almost seamless.

So did she like it this time? Seems okay, she was excited this morning when I told her it's done. The first thing she asked was, "Where are the buttons? Mummy didn't make the button holes, darling. But I think if I use the Hello Kitty ones, they should just be able to be slipped into the border stitch. I tried to persuade her to wear it for a photo shoot but caught her at the wrong moment. See her tired and sleepy face? We just came back from a fun afternoon of bicycle riding. That's all for now. Nice weekend, everyone!

Eureka, sort of

Looks like I may not be receiving my Fall IK afterall, Bliss has the story. How appalling. I did get goodies on Saturday though: Lorna's Laces sock yarn! The pink and blue colourway is 'Baby Stripes' for my babies while the dark one is 'Ravenswood'.

I was 'good' and worked only on the Brice cardigan this weekend. I swatched the pink yarn on 3.25mm needles and the gauge turned out to be 30 sts to 10 cm. Undeterred by the fine gauge, I knitted away. But it was so boring that after a couple of inches of stocking stitch, I decided to give the crochet another try. Moreover, the reason I chose this design was because I like the stitch pattern. So I looked hard at the sleeve which in fact is better than a swatch, took out pen and paper, and counted backwards carefully trying to work out how to arrive at the right row for neck shaping. It didn't help that my gauge was off both stitch and row wise, and that the pattern is written for two sizes only, 2- and 6-year, while I'm trying to make it for a 4-year old. I'm determined to make it work and got a little 'Eureka' moment when the first front was completed. The fronts are now done, just that they are a tad narrow and I'm going to do some adjustments on the back to balance off.

Brice sleeves

Ji Yuan is into her third week in K2 and the Brice cardigan that I meant to make for her for this school year is still languishing. I'm determined to finish this and went a-hooking. At least I finished the sleeves.

And a close up of the stitch pattern and the scallop edgings.

The entire sleeve is charted so all I had to do was to crochet accordingly. Going back to the bit of front I crocheted a while back, I took a hard look at the pattern that is in words and found that I'd started it all wrong. No wonder the neck shaping didn't work. Boo-boo. So the front jumped into the frog pond. I'm thinking of a shortcut. Let me see if it works.

Just a little local tidbit: do you know that yesterday (14th) was the start of the auspicious eighth lunar month which ended the Hungry Ghost Festival? Maybe my knitting will get smoother this month.

Another attempt at crochet

Not daunted by my blunder on the sizing of the crochet motif top, I make yet another attempt to crochet a garment. This time it is the Brice cardigan from Bouton D'or Hors Serie #12 for Ji Yuan. The cardigan comes in two sizes only, 2 years and 6 years. Ji Yuan is going on 4 years and given my tendency to make things a little tighter, I'll make the larger size. It is so difficult for me to measure tension for crochet projects. There just aren't rows and columns to count. Here's my tiny piece of swatch, see what I mean?

For this pattern, the writer highlighted in the crochet chart where to measure the swatch so I could figure out this time. To play safe, I've started with the right front. Just in case there's a need to rip, there'll be fewer stitches. I'm using Filatura Di Crosa Dolce Amore 100% cotton yarn in pale pink and 3mm crochet hook. The yarn is ultra soft and light, it feels just like cotton wool and 50g of it gives 180m. The pattern is easy to follow and the yarn a pleasure to crochet except for the occasional snag.

Some progress has been made and I'm now about to shape the front neck but find myself at the wrong pattern row. It is a short bolero-styled cardigan, so I won't mind adding a bit of length. Hence I'm inclined to rip back to the armhole shaping to add some rows in order to arrive at the right pattern row for the neck shaping. But wait a minute, I always have gauge problem, so let me stop and check before I frog anything. I'm also going to crochet the sleeves first to ascertain the needed armhole length. Got to make it work this time. Or maybe, I'll go and knit a bit on my Delta.

Interested in some Japanese patterns? This site, found via Chie's blog, has loads of free ones. Chie gave a very good explanation on how to download the patterns. Enjoy!