Blue Cardigan F’reals Yo

This is the tale of a crochet book that I owned for two years and never used and the yarn I owned for eight years and could never use up. I’ll give you a hint — it has a happy ending.

Let’s start with the yarn, because it’s older. When we lived in France, there was a tiny sewing notions shop 30 seconds from the front door of my apartment building. The lady who owned it also had a display rack of yarn that she would wheel out onto the sidewalk on nice days. It was basically a many-armed coat tree with bags of yarn in all colors hanging from it. I can’t remember how much I paid for it, but I seemed to think it was a good deal. I believe there were twenty 50 gram skeins of yarn in there. I bought it with the intention of making my mom a sweater. And I did. But there was more. So I made my French friend, Stephanie, a diaper cover for her baby. And there was still more. So I made a baby blanket and a long skinny scarf and there was still more. This was the yarn that would never die. It reminds me of the Bible story where the widow pours out oil into jars and it just keeps coming. No shortage of oil and no shortage of blue French yarn.

Hey, Penguin, you so fine!

The book I bought a few years later was through a craft book club. It’s called Crochet So Fine by Kristin Omdahl. I was captivated by the lacy purple wrap featured on the front cover. I had just been the recipient of two fairly large skeins of hunter green laceweight yarn and figured that this book would give me a good use for it (I haven’t used that yarn yet because I have no idea how much of it I really have and I’m paranoid to start a project and find out it’s not enough). I was flipping through the book again a few weeks ago and noticed that not all of the patterns used thread or laceweight yarn. In fact, there are a few that use DK/sportweight yarn. And one of them just happened to be a cardigan, which I need. I feel weird in church wearing a heavy corduroy jacket over my nice dresses just ’cause my arms are cold.

The pattern I used is called Pearl’s Cardigan. I liked it because it looked feminine and pretty without being overly delicate. I needed it to have enough coverage to keep me warm, but liked the open areas that keep it from looking too dense.

I really liked the way this pattern worked up. It began with the yoke and worked down all in one piece. The sleeves are crocheted in the round directly onto the sweater. No seams whatsoever! I likes it. I did get a little nervous when it came to the sleeves because I was finally (finally!!!) running out of yarn. I managed to eke out just enough, though, by unraveling a solitary sleeve from some other project using the same yarn (two strands together, boo-ya). I spent a lot of time winding little yarn balls for this. But it was enough!

The book suggests running a ribbon or scarf through the waistline to cinch in the sweater.