My current project is sort of best of both worlds – a combination of top down and bottom up crocheting. While it is a little bit more effort than usual, I feel more confident about the “finishing” of the project.

I had 4 hanks of 56g each in my stash. The yarn is 3 ply 3 shades of cyan-grey colorway. I wanted to do something lacy, light for spring / early winters. As I had long strand variegated yarn, I also wanted to see if I could do planned color pooling. Having done shells in a few different ways for my previous cardigan projects, I didn’t want to repeat that. I was looking for inspirations. I happen to visit my parents for a weekend and I saw a nice white lacy tablecloth. It was worked with diamond stitches. It was really lacy and the diamonds were repeated after every 5 rows of dc1-ch3 sequence. I decided to go with diamond stitch cardigan with 3/4 sleeves.
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Yarn:

56 grams of 3 ply yarn gives about 350 meters. So I’ve about 1400 meters to work with.

Pattern:

Back of body

• Chain for 18 inches.
• Do a dc each.
• Do diamond in 7 rows, skipping first n last st of row, to reduce for armhole.
• Repeat until desired armhole length depth is achieved.

Two front pieces

• Chain for 9 inches.
• Do a dc each.
• Do diamond in 7 rows, skipping first n last st of row, to reduce for armhole.
• Repeat until desired armhole length depth is achieved.

Join the front pieces with back. Join the shoulders as well.

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At this stage, I realized that the diamond stitch is not looking very nice with variegated yarn. Secondly, pooling was not working as planned.

I decided to change the stitch. Starting top-down from base of finished work, I started doing rounds of dc for desired cardigan length.

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Next I worked the sleeves in dc stitch throughout. I also added pocket this time, my hands are really cold during winter. Added wooden buttons. Use shells for edging top and bottom. Some work is pending for sleeves.

Here’s the cardigan before blocking.

 

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Now to the pooling effect, I tried different tension and you can see the effect on pooling.

Alternate rows:

 

Stacked bars:

Shift effect:

Desired pooling:

Off course, this would work in rounds and not in rows.

Overall, I am happy with my experiment of pooling. i have learnt a thing or two about pooling. It will certainly help me with me next attempt at it.

Another thing I learnt is while doing sleeves top down, somehow it shrinks by each row even when I am not decreasing stitches. I want more “open” sleeves, but it fits snugly. in future I would do sleeves separately and later sew it to the armhole.

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This is the most economic cardigan I have ever owned. It cost me 160 INR for the yarn and INR 30 for the buttons. Along with hours and hours of crochet. Still, it’s just 190 bucks. Where would I get that?

Glad to have added another piece to my winter wardrobe.