Pattern of the Weeeeeeeeek - Great British Granny Shrug

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This week I'm talking about the Great British Granny Shrug. Full disclosure - it's one of mine - but because I got the idea from around and about I put it up for free. I'm featuring it because a version of it has made it into the window once more:

Just below the ceiling tile where the leak was. Ahhhhhh. Lovely.

Now, this is a very easy pattern. Even if I say so myself.

 

It's essentially made out of two granny hexagons. So if you've managed to make a granny square (for example if you've been on one of our Learn to Crochet One lesson....) then you can make this. All you have to do is start with six shells in the middle and then move outwards with six corners. Twice. Dead easy.

What does make people struggle, is the putting it together so I thought I might explain that a little better now with some of my beautiful artwork. So, you'll end up with something like looks like this: 

 

The coloured dots are simply where you fold it. You can fold the blue corners to eachother or the green ones or of the purple ones. (Just to be clear though, the colours in the corners don't appear on the work - this is just two show you that you have options which is perhaps why it's confused people doing the pattern.) Any will work. I used the purple ones:

 

Once you've folded the purple corner onto the other purple folder you'll get a 'T' shape as shown by the light orange dotted line. Dead easy. Then you need to: 

 

 Sew the red line to the equivalent red line on the other granny hexagon that you've made, making the back and that's when it looks like this:

 

 Can you see? And finally:

 

 You sew the tops of the arms to themselves and  that gives you the basic shape. It'll look like a much more beautiful version of this:

 

 Yeah!?!?!?!?!

Lots of people have worked it out but I thought I'd make it super clear. I hope that helps.

Now, more about the actual pattern itself. I used the Fashion Aran when we used to stock in in 100g balls because I'd made a Union Jack hot water bottle cover and had loads left over which meant that the original uses a 4.5mm hook and aran weight yarn. BUT YOU CAN USE WHATEVER YOU WANT! The hexagons have to be the same size of course, otherwise they won't sew together nicely and you'll have one arm longer than the other but you can literally use sewing cotton and a .000000000005 hook if you wanted. You shouldn't want to do that though and if you do you need seeing to... If you look at the projects that people have made though you'll see they've done it in all sorts of weights.

Now, limitations. There are limitations to this pattern and that is that the chest/bust size decides the width and length of the arms and the body. 

  

 So the purple line indicates a quarter of the bust measurement. The orange line between the purple and blue ones indicates the length of the sleeve and the green line indicates the length of the jacket from below the arm. The relationship between the blue and the green line indicate the half width of the sleeve (which I think means that the crucial measurement of the length of the purple, blue and green lines is the width around the whole of the sleeve but don't quote me on this, all of a sudden it's got very mathsy in here...). Anyway, essentially, you don't have a choice, once you've got a bust/chest measurement, what anything else is doing to do. Only, you kinda do..... 

You can add on to the bottom of the cardigan or onto the length of the sleeves, really easily. Especially the sleeves, just go round and round in granny stripes. The bottom is a little hard because you'll have to work in rows which means you'll have one row of front facing trebles and one row of back facing trebles if you decide to go back and forth. If you've done one row stripes anyway and are therefore having to break your yarn at the beginning and end of each stripe then just make sure you're always working with the right side facing. If you're not doing stripes then decide whether you're ocd enough to care about that. OOOOOOOOOOOR. You can start from the very beginning of the hexagon, flipping after the sl-st at the end of each round so that you're kind of working back and forth and kind of working in rounds. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR you could just think much less about this sort of thing than I do.

But! If you decide to do any of this adding onto anywhere, there is the added (and probably very slight or even unique to me) disappointment in losing the sheer simplicity of a bloody cardigan made out of two hexagons.

THE CHOICE IS YOURS DEAR READERS. 

And that, as they say is that. Although, you probably need a proper photo of the thing don't you? Haha. 

 

Lovely ain't it?

Love Eleanor. xxxxxxxxxxx