Creating a Crochet Cardigan

My mother in law treated me to a Mollie Makes subscription for Christmas 2016, it's exciting every month a magazine coming through the day and an array of lovely creations to practice and make. I do find the magazine is loaded more with crochet creations then knit, and as knit is my primary choice i generally find myself ooling over pretty crochet pictures in awe of the designs.

As you all know i made myself a crochet blanket for the van a few months back, it used a basic Granny Square designed for the main body, so i felt after crocheting 143 squares i felt quietly confident in making them. So when i came across the crochet granny square cardigan by Anna Knits in issue 81 i knew i had to get my super pretty crochet hooks out and give it a go. I could see myself in it, bobbing around at a festival, keeping warm in the van, i knew it had to be mine and with that the project began. 

I wanted to use more autumnal colours then the ones in the pattern, i also chose to use different wool as using the wool in the pattern was going to cost around £60 and i was concerned i may mess up with it being my first big crochet clothing item so therefore wanted to buy nice wool but also affordable wool. I shopped around and settled on Big Value King Cole Super Chunky in Heather, Green and Cerise. When it arrived in the post i was so happy with the colours and knew there were what i would say 'my colours'. 

So i set to work and began to understand the pattern, as obviously it wasn't as easy as i first convinced myself. The caridgan is plain on one side and more patterned on the other, silly me, didn't realise this for sometime and kept pulling the pattern our as i couldn't make sense how both sides would match up. One afternoon i suddenly had  alight bulb moment and realised the difference in the pattern. After that i felt the crochet came together nicely and it was hooky all the way. 

I used cerise as the main body of the colour, purple is my favourite but i know it's also my go to so i decided to go different and use purple (heather) for the least amount of colour. So i replaced the yellow for heather, the blue for green and used a similar but more autumnal pink for the main (cerise). 

The pattern was really nice to work with and i felt for a first time crocheter i was able to decipher and make sense of pattern reading, i asked a friend for a few helpful hints however found i managed to work most of it out myself and unpick any crochet code i didn't understand with the help of google. 

I think putting it all together was the most challenging, it crocheted up really thick and when i put it all together i found the arms were too tight so had to unpick and start again which was a real stress. I think the arms are my most disappointing bit of the crochet make as i made a few mistakes which i thought i could get past, however the result was super tight skinny arms. After a big of restitching though and quick thinking they worked out okay and it's only me and the keen crocheter that can probably tell. 

oh yeah and the sleeves are a bit long, however they actually look nice folded up. I really felt the cardigan came together when i did the edging, it's all different colours depending on what colour you were edging on too. I felt it defined the cardigan and completed it. 

I took it on it's first outing when we stayed at our favourite pub in Malham, sadly we didn't get any photo's as we were enjoying being nestled by the fire with wine and games. However it did look good with a nice denim shirt underneath it. Can't wait to rock it more over winter. 

** i feel my camera hasn't shot the colours as well as i would have liked as the light was bright**