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Tag: Shrug Page 1 of 3

Shrug of Many Colors – Finished!

Haute Couture it’s not, but I like it.

The center section, crocheted with the first yarn, reminds me of a faded garden at the end of summer. The outer section? Deep and moody; what you might find in the dark crevices of your garden.

HexesShrugFront

HexesShrugBack

I connected the hexes at the end into a tube for a sleeve. I wanted a slight taper. The end of the sleeves contain 4 hexagons (column 1). I wanted 5 hexes at the upper arm (column 3). This meant that I needed to cobble a puzzle piece to fit into column 2. This was approximately 2/3 of a hexagon. I used LauraLRF’s diagrams for half hexagons as my jumping off point. I also used them to to fill in the top and bottom of the shrug.

I finished the shrug off with a row of single crochet around the sleeves and 2 rows of sc around the body. A bit of steam and light pressing, and it’s done! Just in time for warm weather.

Unlike the other shrug that I used as a basis, this shrug has a distinct top (neck) and bottom.

What would I do differently?

It goes without saying that, if I were to do this again, I would do it all in a single color way, or at the very least, two color ways of similar hues and values.

While I like the ease and convenience of the join as you go method described in the original hexagon recipe at Attic24, I wouldn’t do it again. The hexagons look tacked down, because that’s what it is. You can see blips of tacks in adjacent hexagons.

This method worked for this particular shrug because I was working on a fit/design-as-I-go. Sometimes, this meant ripping out just one hexagon, sometimes it was 5, but not always adjacent. If I joined using any other method, it would have mean ripping out more.

But I do like the serendipity of the color placement that the join-as-you-go method affords. I didn’t have to agonize over the final placement of all the individual hexagons. I think that would have stalled me out and taken longer to finish the shrug.

It’s a trade off that needs more consideration.

I also modified the start/end of round 2. I wasn’t fond of how the first couplet looked in Round 2 (the ch2, 1 dc) pair. It just looked like 2 dc next to each other instead of a bobble like the rest of the round. I have modified it so that the first stitch looks more like a bobble.

Here’s how I did it:

  • ch 3
  • (work a bobble stitch into next stitch, ch 1) 11 times
  • work the first half of the bobble stitch, work a slip stitch into the 2nd stitch of the chain 3 and pull through all the stitches on the hook. The chain becomes the second half of the bobble.

Shrug of Many Colors

HexesShrug

2013 Spring Cleaning #2 Update

Grace wasn’t sure about the contrast between the 2 different yarns. Here’s a picture of 2 bitty scraps, one from each yarn.

SC2Scraps

Pretty darned close, no?

There are color overlaps between the two yarns that make them nearly indistinguishable from each other. The second yarn is mostly black based, but the color sections are similar in hue and value of the darker sections of the rainbow yarn. I think it will work. If it doesn’t? There’s always a dye bath.

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