Clare has been doing SO MUCH crochet this year!  I’ll do a post at some stage showing you all the things she’s made – cardigan, jumpers, tops, bags, amigarumi, fingerless gloves, hats.  Considering she only started to crochet in January she’s taken to it like a duck to water.  She now has a larger yarn stash than I do (I did hand some of mine over).  She does have a public TikTok account that she shares some of her crochet on; it’s called dacapitalcrochet.  Anyway, while she had some cotton yarns out I decided that it was time to get wrestle my hooks away from Clare and make myself a top.

This was actually pretty straightforward to make. The front and back are exactly the same. Two rectangles that are seamed together at the shoulders leaving an opening for the head, and seamed together at the sides leaving an opening for the arms. The pattern is the Granny Stripes Ripple Sweater by Ana D.

I made a couple of modifications to the pattern. I knew I’d want it longer than designed, so added another row of contrast/main. I had chosen to crochet the L/XL size for a finished bust circumference of 126cm, but my gauge wasn’t right (yeah, I know I should do a gauge swatch but I didn’t) and I knew that it wasn’t going to have the amount of ease that I preferred. My fix was to crochet three rows of granny stripes along each side after I had seamed the shoulders together, then I seamed the sides. This gave me the ease I wanted and a nice border of the main blue yarn at the armholes.

This sort of garment is pretty holey by it’s very nature, and I wore it over a tank. You’d be able to get away with it just over a bra though. The yarn is all Cotton 8ply from Bendigo Woollen Mills. It’s an excellent yarn that is well priced in those big Bendi 200g balls, and comes in a wide range of colours in 4ply, 8ply and 10ply.

This was a satisfying and fast project – as is often the case, it took me longer to weave in the ends and then to get it photographed than it took to make it! I actually finished this back in early October – and now it’s early December!