Crochet Granite Cardigan

I've been dreaming about this cardigan over a year.
Finally it´s finished and it turned out the be just wonderful!


The yarn (Rowan Hemp Tweed) have been in my stash from May last year. I have been searching the right pattern and most of all my courage to do another cardigan. Because I have my last crocheted cardigan in my fresh memory.  Overall it was very difficult to find suitable pattern for this yarn and with the stitch pattern that I had in mind. I have fell in love with the "moss Stitch" and I wanted to use that for this cardigan.

I was so happy to find this Granite Cardigan by Stephanie Lau from All About Ami.
The free pattern can be found form here.


Rowanin Hemp Tweed has 95 meters in 50 grams. It is 75% wool and 25% true hemp. The pattern uses Lion Brandin New Basic which is 75 % acryl and 25% wool.  It has 160 meters in 100 grams. I had bought 10 balls of Hemp Tweed so I had total of 500 grams yarn.



I made the cardigan with hook 6 mm and took the size S. I didn´t make any swatch because I thought that by starting to make the front panel and comparing the measurements of that to the pattern can tell me that am I in the right way. And I was. Yay!! 

Hooking the first panel.


The front and back panels was fast to crochet. I made 97 rows to each panel. At this point the length of the panels were about 60 cm.


Then to the sleeves. I made the sleeves little bit differently than in the pattern because at this point I was sure that I do not have enough yarn. I decided to take a risk and buy more yarn, same color of course but different dye lot. I used everything I could from the "old" dye lot to the sleeves and to the length of the panels.

The sleeves are started in the pattern from the cuffs, but I started from top of the cuff, and added the cuffs later.

Here is a picture when the sleeves pieces are finished. 



I first attached the sleeves to the body part, then I made the cuffs and after that I sew the armpit and body seam.




Then the collar. I love the collar! Collar was made directly to the cardigan by picking up 222 half double crochet stitches from the body part. I just love this ribbing used in this pattern. Please go and check the tutorial from here.

The hem of course has the same ribbing. It was made separately and sewed in the cardigan.
 And voilá the cardigan is finished!! Now the length of the cardigan was about 67 cm.






I was very nervous about the wet blocking. I gave the cardigan a bath, about 15 minutes in a lukewarm water that had conditioner for woolen clothes. I tried to be extra careful when handling the wet cardigan but I noticed right away that it had gained much more the length.

Luckily I had taken measurements of the cardigan before the bath and I tried to match the cardigan to those figures. I was happy to notice that the width didn´t grow significantly, but it had gained almost 20 cm more length! Wow! In fact I was very pleased about that because I wanted to have long cardigan. Of course the sleeves got length also which worried me. I tried to pull in the fabric of the sleeves together so that they wouldn´t be too long.


After the wet blocking the cardigans length is 85 cm.
I used little bit over 13 balls of yarn, total 645 grams.




The wet blocking succeeded much better than I anticipated. The cardigan became just perfect!
I would not change a thing! The yarn soften a lot and got much more drape.


You probably now that I love this cardigan tremendously :)





I am also talking about this cardigan in my crochet vlog, click the image below.



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