forest breeze tee
Which would be my first piece of clothing to crochet!
Also first time (back in March) I crocheted a gauge swatch (actually I don't think I ever even knitted a gauge swatch over my years of knitting). Bonus at least that crocheting works up so much faster - so doing a gauge swatch doesn't feel quite so horribly interminable.
Before and after being put through the wash with a load of laundry that the finished garment would be joining!
It let me calculate not only my own gauge for the pattern, but how it changed size-wise with washing, and make adjustments.
(I was already making adjustments because the pattern is a crop top and I like longer tops as well as being tall, and broad-shouldered. The length is easy to adjust - it's worked in front and back panels, top down, and I could just keep adding rows at the bottom.)
The top on either side of the vee neck is worked in two panels, so. . .
First one in progress, then complete. . . (Wide side is the horizontal, with what would become the vee neck on the left.)
Then started on the second upper panel, which . . . was somehow not quite the same size. Argles. >.>
But I kept at it anyway - figured as I worked it might even out and also . . . well it might work out well enough when put together anyway, too, it's a small enough difference and the pieces are large.
(That second one is put side by side to check the width against each other, the first set is arranged the way the vee neck actually would be.)
Then time to continue from the second panel by crocheting directly across to join the second panel to it, and work down from there as one piece.
. . .and after I did that for a few rows, and had it together enough to lay it against myself and feel how it would sit a bit. . .
Well, the reason for all the 'would' and whatnots.
This is now sitting in my hibernating UFO box waiting to be frogged, because while I didn't mess anything up, there's enough of it together to feel how it would sit and tell that the vee neck would not be comfortable for me, or a neckline I like in general.
And I refuse to put that much work (and money for that matter, though I did pick this colour partly because I like grey and partly because this colour was mysteriously marked down) on a piece of clothing if I won't love it.
So. Frogging.
I do have some thoughts on ways to adjust it further and in different ways to make a neckine that I would like, but *sighs* I'll get to it, and start over . . . ish.
I'll also be debating how much I can change it before I'm not actually altering that pattern any more but making up my own. Since I intend to change the length, the neckline, the hem, the sleeves. . .
*ahem*
(Project on Ravelry)
