Wanted to revisit my Dark Country Blue Granny Row loose cardigan project and try working it top down to both avoid seams and allow me to continue until I run out of yarn. Idea was to start with a C shaped combination of foundation single crochet and single crochet along the back side, then work granny square clusters to widen. Did not want to go buy yarn for a concept, so looked in my stash. I had these two that I was very disappointed in the laundering results. Both say they are machine wash and dry. In previous projects, Premier Cotton has shrunk, and Bordeaux has turned into Velcro. Since I didn’t want to use either, and I never throw out yarn, I decided to use both together. The largest hook I am comfortable with is a K, so I used that.

Began with foundation sc counting off “cluster, skip one, skip 2” to myself to figure out how many to do. It appears I went with 7. Then I did a chain 1, and worked into each fsc from the bottom side. Proceded in fsc counting as above and worked enough for neck and other shoulder. I count 24 stitches. Chained one as at other shoulder and worked 7 back along bottom. Chain 3 to count as first dc and turned. Worked rest of 3dc cluster in first sc, then worked ch1, skip two sc or fsc, 3dc in next sc to end of row. (Ignored chain to turn to bottom of fsc.) For the next five rows, I worked chain 3 to turn and count as first dc, two more dc in first dc, then ch1, skip 3dc, 3dc in chain space (standard granny square instructions) to shoulder edge, work granny square corner by adding another ch1, 3dc in the same ch, continue in row pattern and repeat for other corner, end with last 3dc in last dc. Then I decided the shoulders had grown enough and I didn’t want points on my arms, so I worked five more rows without making a corner at the shoulder. I realized the arm opening was going to have to be horizontal if I did not want to cut yarn, so i marked four spaces centered under each shoulder. When I got there on the row, I worked a chain, then fsc as at the neckline to compensate for the four spaces was skipping. Looks like I made 11. Then did a chain and went back to granny row, and repeated for the other arm. On the next row, I worked a cluster into the chain, then established the pattern as above with skip 2, cluster, then did the last cluster in the chain at the end and repeated on the other side. When I ran out of yarn at the end, it looked like that would be enough to do a row of sc, so I frogged back to the start of that row and worked a row of sc instead. Fastened off and only had two tails to weave in!

After I tried it on a final time, I got to thinking about how dangling ends usually get in my way. They wanted to fold back anyway, so I folded back to 6 clusters across the front and sc’d it together with 18 stitches in the cotton only that I still had left. It’s still completely reversible since the pockets can be flipped to either side. But I did have four more tails to weave in.

Was going to take some closeups of any instructions that seemed like might be confusing, but couldn’t really see what I was talking about in this yarn. Guess I will have to make another ;)