About a month ago a young lady contacted me through facebook, saying that she had seen some of the pictures of my crocheting, and really liked them, so would I consider making her a jumper?
Well, I was a bit taken aback. Astonished, flattered, gob-smacked, all those things, that someone had liked my stuff enough to want me to make them something. I didn't really know what to say, as I have only been crocheting for a year or so, and wasn't sure that I could make something that she would like.
Also I had no idea how long it would take me to make a jumper (never having made one before) - it could be months!
Anyway, the young lady was very kind and told me that she wanted a garment that was big and sloppy, but colourful, and told me the colours she liked and pointed out one of the blankets I'd made which she liked the pattern of. So I said that I would be happy to give it a go, but I didn't know how it was going to turn out.
As it happened, once I got started, I really enjoyed it.
The main pattern is what I call my 'circle to square', with colours fading from dark to light in the circle bit, then light to dark in the square part. I tried to make all the central circles slightly different from each other, but kept the outer squares in the same colour configuration to give the garment an over-all harmony.
The first part of the pattern was easy: going off the jumper I'd made earlier this year for Graham, I started by making four blocks of nine squares. One block for the front, one for the back and one for each arm. And to further harmonise these blocks, the central square in each block has sunny orange and yellow colours. When I'd made those blocks I then had to figure how they were going to be joined together.
I went for the shoulders first and made two more of my sunny blocks, which joined the front and back squares together into a sort of tabard.
Then I had a measure and realised that I could really do to have a few more inches on either side of the body, but not enough to make a whole square, so instead I made long rows of the colours I'd used for the edges of the squares. Once I'd done that, I then had to join in the arms, but because the body was now three and a bit squares wide, and the arms three squares, there would be a gap underneath the arm. I filled this by making a triangle at the top of each striped row, so that I could join the arms to each side of the triangle, then close them into a cylinder as they met at the top of the triangle.
That worked out smashing, and was a lot less fiddly than I'd imagined
I tried the jumper out on a hanger and realised two things: the neck hole looked far too big and the proportions of the body weren't quite right.
I decided that another row of squares around the bottom would sort the proportions out, but I decided to simply join each square at the top to the body and leave the sides open. That would give the jumper more movement, give it the length of a mini dress and also mean that if worn with leggings etc, you would get flashes of the under garment between the squares as they moved.
The only trouble was that I also had a gap at the side where I had made my stripes. So I adapted my circle to square pattern, keeping the circle part as usual, but making the overall shape an oblong, to fit the space.
To make the neck hole smaller, I made four quarter circles which I fitted into the corners of the square neck hole, which would give a sort of 'sweetheart' neckline which is quite a flattering shape.
The whole process was a lot quicker than I expected - but once I get stuck into my crocheting, I tend to do a bit whenever I have a few minutes spare.
Happily when the young lady saw the results, she said she was pleased with it
Oh and by the way, when got home from shopping on Friday we found a parcel outside our front door.
When we opened the door and went inside, there was a card on the doormat, which was headed: 'Where's My Parcel?', and the box marked 'Porch' was ticked.
Nice to see the delivery people have a sense of humour.
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