A baby crochet project
When I went North over Christmas I took a ball of wool left over from the epic crochet project, and a pattern I had been wanting to try, just incase. I am not so good at sitting around doing nothing for too long, but one can hardly read in company. Crochet, however, solves the problem. So I pulled it out one night and began hooking, and my Mum, who used to knit a lot of little garments, exclaimed over how fast crochet appeared. (Because it is fairly quick working in double crochet - or treble, depending on which country you are in).
If I can get a little technical here for a spell, what I found weird about the plys and hook sizes here is (the pattern is a very simple Cleckheaton Master Crochet book): you are given the pattern in 4 ply, using a 3mm hook, and in 8 ply, using a 4mm hook. But, my wool was 5 ply. You would think 5 ply would be closer to 4 ply than 8 ply, but 5 ply specifies a 3.75mm hook, which, as you may have noticed, is closer to 4mm than it is to 3mm. So, I made this up with 5 ply, following the 8 ply pattern, thinking it would be a little smaller than the size it was supposed to be. But, it basically came out the same size as the 8 ply measurements - and I thought my crochet tension was on the tighter end, not the looser end. Curious. So, it's a bit larger than I had actually intended.
The worst part about it was doing the edging in the side of double crochet, where it's anybody's guess where you are going to put your stitch. I did the cuffs first, and put a few too many stitches in, thus they came out a little flared as you can see, so I had to reduce my stitches around the front.
These are very traditional baby colours (the colours are truest in the bottom photo - the afternoon sun has given the others a strange glow), but I thought the stripey buttons gave it a little bit of modern snap. I reckon I could make it in all sorts of colour combinations and add it to my crochet repertoire. This one is pure wool and going to a baby in Tasmania.
