Cat Mad Crochet

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

“Hey, Mom, can you make a 90s style boyfriend sweater with a little fitting around the waist and not too floppy arms?”

As “This Here Giraffe” starts playing in my head, I remember my own perfect “boyfriend” sweater. It was big and baggy and wooly and warm until the totally bogus boyfriend washed it on hot and dried it in the dryer. Then I had an awesome sweater that fit me perfectly as a short sweater with slight sweater paws. It was very, almost overly, warm because it was felted but whatever. Turns out the ruined sweater was better than the skeezy boyfriend. 

Adia’s sweater would, of course, not have the nasty baggage of a worthless boyfriend. It could just exist as a happy sweater. We pulled six hanks of Jaggerspun lace weight yarn (about 6700 yards) from my stash and decided to hold that double for a bit more cozy squish. She wanted the stitch pattern to be textured but solid-ish. I tested several different plain Jane solid stitches that felt flat and boring, so I settled on a sort of half-double crochet together stitch with a little chain between each group. Because the stitches nest down into each other, it’s important to turn the rows to get the full effect of a more solid fabric. You could try it without turning the rows, of course. If you do, post a picture in the comments. I’d love to see what it looks like.

Starting with a more open neckline, we settled on a sort of loose interpretation of a compound raglan. I set up the increase such that I could work an increase on each side of the raglan line or not and not mess up the whole thing. This is exactly the kind of stitch pattern you need for a compound raglan, so if that’s your thing, have at it. I mostly did steady increases on both sides of the raglan lines until the last few rows. It was really nice because I could very carefully control the number of stitches the sleeves, front, and back had at the end of the yoke. I shall try not to let this sort of control go to my head.

I brought the body of the sweater in a bit for the waist and tailored the sleeves. The baggy nature meant I didn’t need to do any bust shaping, but it would have been easy to set up if I had. I would have gone farther with the sweater paws, but I ran out of yarn. Warning to my future self: Plan ahead for sweater paws. Overall, the feel is a loose but not excessively baggy sweater with a bit of tailoring. It’s exactly what Adia wanted, so I’m counting it as another successful bespoke sweater. Take that, Goldilocks.

In the attached PDF you will find my notes about making this sweater, complete with diagrams for the basic pattern, the increase, and the decrease. Give them a try and make yourself a perfect sweater for any decade.