Cropped Cardigan

Yeah... finally! Remember the February Sneakpeak? I managed to finish a major project - a cropped cardigan; a modification of short sleeve jacket which (a free pattern) was found from Lion Brand. Ehmmm.... excuse me... although I don't intend to give promotion to any party whatsoever, I feel that I owe them a token of appreciation for a wonderful pattern and a forum called Crochet Along (CAL) to help you better understand the pattern and how to use it.


... can show off to my friends tomorrow ;-) .. buttons can come in later :D

I used just a strand of yarn (instead of two as instructed) for two major reasons:
1. I'm not living in a 4-seasons country and the weather is hot most of the time... and
2. It was hard to find suitable yarn like cotton (to match the weather) in my hometown
So, therefore I just use whatever is available and the result is roughly twice as much stitches needed compared to the original pattern. Hmm... so the amount of time taken to finish the project? Two years... from Dec 2009 to Feb 2010! Whoa!!!

Well... it's not exactly a solid 3 months lah... Come thinking of it, I just do it on and off, over the weekend... and sometimes a few '10-minutes' at night when I was restless... Too tired to go through my 'homework' (yeah.. yeah... I'm still at school, what...), yet part of my mind is still 'engaged' with things at school... The remedy? Toying with yarn, of course! And what do you know... a handful of yarns could slowly merged into something wonderful (ahak!!)... like my 'cropped' cardigan.

Sneakpeek - February 2010

I'm working on a yarn project. So far, it seems quite promising but still needs some finishing touches. In the meantime, I'll show you the 'intermediate' result:



Hopefully I'll be able to finish it during the CNY break. Oh ya.. Happy New Year to all Chinese friends out there... Have a roaring Tiger Lunar new year!

Picking up knitting

One day, I was inspired by a friend who showed me her knitting project. Little did I know that a knitting (and crocheting) frenzy was hitting some people around me at that time. Not planning to be left behind, I searched high and low for the knitting needles that I once have (supposed to be my daughter's, but I turned out to be the primary user! HA HA ) and started a simple free project that I downloaded from the Internet. It was supposed to be an 'easy+' project - a simple project for beginner with a hint of excitement involving some patterns at the back and front. Basically, it is a combination of purl, knit (k), yarn over (yo) and slip, slip, knit (ssk). However, since I have to refresh my knitting skills and find a comfortable way to handle the needles after sooo many years, I felt sooo.. awkward! LOL

This is where I learnt so many things like a simple way to cast on stitches (thanks to Encho!), binding off and sewing pieces together. I didn't have any double pointed needles so I skipped knitting the cord. As a replacement, I found a nice piece of ready-made cord at one of the stores nearby and here is the outcome: