Tag: Cropped

Anna Crop Top

All the greens in a little crop sweater

I was looking through Ravelry again, as I sometimes do, and found a crop top sweater that looked really cool. It was the Anna Crop Top from Wiam’s Crafts and I decided that I needed one. So I grabbed some of my Ultra Aran and put it in the chafing dish. The sprinkle effect was created by putting 5 dye colours and citric acid in a little salt shaker and just shaking it all over the yarn. The colours were Jacquard Acid Dyes Spruce, Kelly Green, Chartreuse, Teal, and Emerald. In total, I dyed 4 skeins for the project.

When I started knitting this thing, I was extremely afraid that I’d run out of yarn. So I cast on two sleeves at the same time and hoped that it would work out. I did make a fair amount of changes to the pattern that led to both extra yarn used and less yarn used. In the sleeves, I started them with fewer stitches and decided to do gradual increases. But in the body, I added extra stitches to the bottom because it was very short.

When I knit the right amount of sleeve on both sides, I cast on the total number of stitches that I wanted to end with (a few more than per the pattern). Then some short rows to get the shaping effect. I tried doing the pattern instructions first, but it just turned into a lumpy mess so I gave up. One skein was enough for the full sleeve plus the start of the body. Then I attached another skein to one of the sleeve-body things and continued knitting the rest of the body, front and back. I didn’t want to join it in the middle but on one side, and used Russian Grafting to put it all together.

The join is nearly invisible on the knit side, but there is a little interest on the purl side, which is the side that is showing. Still, you don’t see if from any distance. I’ve not really worn it out yet. I tried it with a pair of dungarees that I recently made and am in the process of writing up, but it was still a little too short and I was worried about the cold. It might be more of a spring/summer thing than a winter thing.

Snowy Suspender Sweater

Making a cropped snow white sweater to go with my new replacement red pants or suspenders.

After finishing the replacement pants, I needed something to wear with it. Since it’s not generally summer anymore, I figured that if I wanted to continue to wear it, I’d need some sort of sweater. So I hatched an abbreviated plan…

The plan involved making a sweater that was shorter than all my other sweaters. One that wouldn’t bunch under my dungarees. A secondary purpose would be that I could also wear this sweater with suspenders, hopefully. While suspenders are awesome, sometimes wearing them over clothes is difficult because the item is too long. Then you get a lot of bunching and other less flattering situations. So I bought some nice and thick white yarn, and located an interesting pattern on Ravelry.

I settled on the 157-29 Virginia by DROPS design, and then heavily modified it. My gauge was off and I knew that I have no love for the enormously long armholes that DROPS seems to have, so I recalculated everything from the neckline down. I did keep the A.1 pattern intact as the raglan because that was the defining feature of this sweater and why I chose it in the first place. Once I reached the point where I needed to split for the arms, I decided that I wanted to continue some form of the A.1 pattern in the sleeves as well as the body. In the end I made sure to have two instead of three columns in the body and one in the sleeves.

The sleeves were the first to be completed as I wanted to make sure I had enough yarn to finish them. Then I continues with the body, in contrast to the pattern I only decreased a little but not increased. Then it came time to start the hem and I remembered a frogged project that had a split hem. So I put on a pair of my favourite suspender-requiring pants and determined where the splits were supposed to be. Two in the front and one in center back. By some miracle I managed to have numbers of stitches for all three of the sections that allowed me to do 2×2 rib with 3 stitches of knit at both ends.

I’m very happy with the way this turned out. I’ve worn it with both the red pants and suspender pants and it does the job I want it to do. It’s so nice and cozy and warm. Even if it is white and I did manage to pull a thread by getting stuck on something in my house at one point (luckily that was easily fixed). I haven’t yet managed to get spaghetti sauce or something else horribly staining on it yet, so that’s an achievement!