And here we go again...frogging this yarn for the 5th time. For the uninitiated, that means pulling out all the pretty little loops that you have spent hours painstakingly repeating so that you are left with a ball of yarn and nothing to show for your efforts.
I picked up this pretty white yarn at a Micheal's sale. It has this shiny accent thread that seemed perfect for a bridal piece. Wouldn't it be fun to make things for brides? I got three balls for a great price so I wanted to do something complex. So far I've only done scarves and baby blankets (and one pair of fingerless mittens, but they turned out to be super easy); I was looking for a challenge! I decided to make a shrug or a sweater, and boy has it been a challenge. After five attempts I just hope I can make something work before the yarn falls apart. The most recent iteration, shown above, had a beautiful base stitch and was coming along nicely except that I got confused by the pattern and ended up with a lopsided back and arm holes. Maybe it could work for someone with one particularly bulky arm and one thin stringy arm but I don't know anyone like that so back to the drawing board.
The problem seems to be that I am not an especially good hooker. The patterns I've been following use "standard" abbreviations and don't have any images to compare your work to so you have no way to see if you are headed in the right direction or headed toward a train wreck (and frogging, lots of frogging). So after deciding to pull out all those pretty stitches I went back to the crochet mags I've been collecting for the last few months to find a pattern there. Fortunately these seem to be aimed right at my skill level. The instructions are clear and include stitch diagrams and diagrams that show the shapes and dimensions of each piece and how they are put together. I like pictures. I decided on the Arboretum Cardigan from this summer's Interweave Crochet (not planning to do the flowers but we'll see). It even seems to have a similar base stitch to the one in the picture above.
Wish me luck. I'll post some pictures when I make a little headway.
