It’s still summer here, and it’s really hot.  It’s been hot for day after day after day.  So what have I just finished crocheting?  A Floreal for Clare, for winter.  Yeah, there isn’t really any logic in that.  I even forced her to put on a long sleeved top and long pants in order to model it as it is likely to be worn.  She got really hot, really quickly.

I really started this to use up a big Bendi ball of 8 ply Alpaca. Just one big ball isn’t really enough for lots of garments, but in combination with a small ball of bright pink variegated yarn that Mum had given me, it has turned into a very useful vest.  The colour of the Alpaca was called Prism, but I notice that it’s no longer on their website.

Clare measures 23 inches around the chest, so I made the size 6-7 (25 inches) for her to allow enough ease to wear this over other garments. In terms of length, I just kept on going until I’d pretty much used up the yarn and the length looked about right. This pattern usually has you change colours after every two rows in the body section, to get rows of different coloured flowers. I only did that for the two contrasting rows of flowers closer to the hemline.

This is a lovely little pattern, and it served as my commuting and social crochet project. It was started on the 3rd February, and was finished on the 15th, so definitely didn’t take a long time. It was helped by the fact that I’ve made this pattern before, so the stitches were familiar to me. Rather than use a ribbon for the drawstring, I crocheted a chain about a metre or so long from the contrast yarn and slipstitched back into each stitch. The picot edging around the hem is also in the contrast yarn – mainly because I ran out of the Alpaca!