Crocheting to a Paper Pattern

As most of you know I am not one to stick slavishly to a crochet pattern. I add my own tweaks and variations to suit myself or whoever I am making it for. For Christmas I had made my elder niece a blue Capricious Cardigan but I altered the pattern somewhat. I didn't make the flared side vents ( I shaped by narrowing the pattern as I have on this version)nor did I make it with gathered sleeve heads.

This time my niece asked me if I could add a long sleeve to the pattern so I thought I would explain to you how I worked out a long sleeve and without the sleeve head gatherings.

I found a sweater of mine that was roughly the right size sleeve length and placed it underneath the finished cardigan back and fronts. I placed a folded piece of newspaper along the top edge of the sleeve and then drew around the armhole and then drew a line leading towards the cuff. You can see the finished result on the second photo when I cut around the shape that I had drawn and opened up the fold in the newspaper.As my paper was too short for a sleeve I added a further piece of paper(not shown) to the end of the cuff to make it to the correct length of my niece's arms. I then crocheted the sleeve using the paper pattern as a template.

The third photo shows the pattern and my first finished sleeve. I worked the increases evenly spaced up the sleeve but I kept the pattern as the V stitch for the added stitches. I will show you the finished cardigan with it's long sleeves hopefully tomorrow when I have crocheted the second sleeve.

I learned to crochet this way when I was a teenager and crochet patterns were old fashioned and very rare. I used to place a sweater or cardigan that was roughly the style that I wanted on a table to use for size and then crochet to that shape. You have to make allowances of course for whether the crochet stitch stretches or is firm for an exact fit. I still use this method which is why I never have patterns for some of the garments that I make for myself.I just think of the garment I want to finish up with and work with this method. I like a bit of individuality with my crochet. It's nice to know sometimes that I own the only one of a kind!

Yesterday was rather funny. The neighbours facing me are having a new bathroom suite fitted whilst they are away. The plumbers arranged for a mini skip and proceeded to remove the old bathroom fittings. They broke up the old cast iron bath into 3 pieces and put it in the skip. A white small lorry passed by with tinkers in it. Stopped their lorry and proceeded to take out the bits of cast iron bath from the skip. The plumbers came out with some more bathroom rubble and were looking all around the skip and then up and down the street. it was like Candid Camera. Hey someone has stolen our bath!