A Hug!

From this:

to this:

to this!:

It took quite a while for me to get my Hug finished. You may remember that I ended up knitting far too many rows initially. So I ripped it back and followed the instructions, only to have it... too short! So I ripped and reknit, and again it was too short. By now I was pretty irritated, till I realised that I'd actually knit the first half wrong: instead of increasing at the beginning and end of each row, I'd increased only at the beginning, and so had to work twice as many repeats.

However, I think I much prefer the longer look of the over-hand sleeve:



And it can be rolled back nicely:



I love this pattern. If I can ever get to the stage where I can be a free'n'easy knitter again then I'd like to make loads and loads. As simple as a scarf but a lot more fun! And it's by the same designer as Blackberry.

So. I made this using an unravelled shrug from a charity shop. I haven't used all the yarn up, but it did suck up quite a bit. I can't remember what needles I used - probably Denise 10.5US. It is a little tight - I couldn't seam the sleeves all the way up to the underarm otherwise I couldn't get it on! However, the little gap I left makes it curl nicely around my arm, as if it is supposed to do that. And the pick-up-&-bind-off thing along the back edge forms a really nice plaited effect - that was an instruction that didn't seem to make sense until I actually did it.

If anyone feels daunted by this pattern, don't be! I agree that when you read through it it feels a little complex, but it really isn't. I do hope that I get to make more :)