Working on my Crochet Top

Being at home is the perfect opportunity to start working on the craft-based tasks on my lists. Here is one from my 40×40. #7 Crochet a top

Crochet – easier knitting!

This is one that “ got away” and is, as yet, NOT completed; it got started and kind of merged into a different task on the list, but there is no crocheted top for now.  Let me take you back to the heady days of 2016…actually let’s go back a bit further, purely for contextual reasons…

I cannot Knit

I have tried but I find it a very unforgiving medium.  All of the dropped stitches and holes are evidence of your lack of skill and don’t get me started on tension. What is that about?
My lack of skill is compounded by having a mother who delights in reminding me that she was knitting herself tops when she was nine years old, as she whips up an intricate lacy blanket while watching Coronation Street.  I decided to learn a skill she is not an expert in, merely to avoid smug corrections with every stitch; I took up crochet.

Crochet is a lot more forgiving than knitting

You can literally make up your own stitch, and providing you use it consistently throughout the row it will potentially work.  It is also more transportable and easy to pick up, especially if you go down the granny square route.  This involves making either small squares with the intention of sewing them together at the end, or more intricate shapes like flowers.  There is something quite satisfying about piles of completed squares, ready and waiting for you to sew them together.

If squares are not your style you can build up your work to look like knitting by casting on stitches and crocheting back and fore; this is my preferred method and how I intended to make my top.  Previously I had managed to make baby cardigans by making 2 Hexagon ‘squares’…okay sounds odd, but work with me here.  If you create a five-sided piece, it folds to create an upside-down L shape.   By sewing two of these together, bordering it and adding buttons, you have yourself a cardigan.  This method doesn’t really work with bigger sizes, hence my using the ‘almost like knitting’ method to make my own top.

I’ve started so I’ll…have a half-started project?

I started well.  Using rose pink chunky wool I cast on enough stitches to go around my body.  The plan was to create a panel up to my armpits, then two rectangle pieces for my arms, and somehow stitch the lot together to form something, that if not completely, remotely resembled a cardigan. (In fact, Polly from 2016 tells you all about it in this vlog)

This was, of course, totally salvageable and I decide to use the Rose-coloured rug in another project.  However, this left me without a crochet piece for my 40 x 40; I have lots of half-started work, but, for now, this task remains uncompleted and as such it has been migrated to the Kettle List and has become one of the uncompleted challenges that make up #2 – finish my 40 x 40.

This, therefore, means that, for now, this challenge is…

However.

I now have the time, materials and a lack of excuses to not work on this task. So I am looking through Pinterest and Youtube for some ideas.

Are you trying out a new craft? Where are you getting your inspiration from? How is it going?