Crochet Cardigan

I finished my Bold Lacy Cardigan by Sweaterbabe from her book, Fabulous & Flirty Crochet. It was fun and actually really fast. I did both sleeves in one knitting night with my new group, the University District Knitters. I finished the back in another afternoon and both fronts during one of Kolbe's Monday evening BBQs. Then I just did the sewing and edging in a few hours and finished the button stuff. It was certainly less than 15 hours total.
Here's a crappy picture of the back:

I'll take nice pictures soon. There was a crappy picture of the front, too, but it was really terrible. My belly was hanging out, and I am not going to threaten my vanity by posting it right on my own blog.

Actually, the hardest part of making this cardigan was only my own distrust of the pattern. I'm not very good at trusting other people's designs. I messed around with the first sleeve for about a week before I really got into it. I thought that it just looked impossibly small. So I added a set of the pattern repeat, but that was huge. So I ripped it out. I started over. It looked small. I ripped and added stitches. It looked big. Finally I settled on just following the pattern with one extra stitch on the edge. I blocked that sleeve skeptically and, sure enough, it blocked into a reasonably sized sleeve.
With that good omen I commensed on crocheting the whole sweater. I finished, and, sure, it looked like it would fit an 8-year-old. Faithfully I blocked all the pieces, and the thing ended up fitting perfectly. Yay!!

My only mods were the one extra salvage stitch on each edge of the sleeves, which I'm really glad I added for my bulging biceps, and one extra row of ribbing on the edging.

This is how much yarn I had left. Whew! I really thought I might not have enough. The varigated slub is Debbie Bliss Soho in a discontinued color. The lovely worsted weight is Berroco Ultra Alpaca Worsted in a really nice brownish purple.

This sweater was part of my new commitment to stash busting. I had bought that Soho ages ago, back when I had been knitting probably less than a year. Originally I had intended to use it for Teva Durham's Corrugated Asymetrical V-neck from her Loop-d-Loop book. Thank goodness Ravelry showed me the error of that intention!
Of course, to bust that stash yarn I had to go buy some more yarn to carry with it.... But both are nearly used up, so good on me.