After 60 starting chains I was already at almost my shoulder width. I looked at the cloud repeat and it seems to be 6 stitches long, so I added 6 more (plus one to finish) and I got to about 15 inch wide. I think it’ll be all right.

Row 21, I still have 66 stitches. After a few attempts, the right way to get a neck was: 2sc, 2hdc, 2dc, 2tr, ch1, 2dc, 2hdc, 42sc.

Row 22: rep till chain then Ch 50.

Got to row 42 (S/M size), and it’s time to block.

As I am so off gauge (66 stitches across instead of 109…), I’m not sure how wide I should get. Unblocked, my piece is 35cm wide by 15cm tall. Let’s see…

Ok! Blocked! 40cm wide by 37 tall!
(it should be 49 by 37!) - perfect! I didn’t want it to be that wide anyway! amazing…

Ok! Sleeves part!
I got to the end of the 8 rounds of sleeves with 78 sc’s in the front and back parts, and 70 in the sleeves.
I do like the sc part with a 3.5mm hook, it looks very pretty and it has drape. Brill! I want to use it more!

1 mod. Round 9, I did it all in sc’s. i tried putting hdc’s and dc’s in the 2 chain spaces, but they made the little square holes lose their definition. So I switched to sc’s only. Much happier with that.

I freaked out about the colour in the Whirl starting to change on the sleeves, so I decided to continue with the whirlette all the way to the end of the sleeves.

I hope I am not spoiling the effect… Fingers crossed :)

Round 10-12 - I had to add 12 sc’s under each armpit, rather than 4. At the start of Round 12 (the puffs one) I have 180 stitches in total in the round (instead of 222), but it seems to fit me ok and you can divide it by 6, which is the pattern repeat.

Let’s keep going :)

Round 14 - my dc’s are too ‘loose and lacey’, and they detract from the popcorns. I’ll do 2 rows of sc’s instead.

And so I kept going, making 3 rows of sc’s in between each row with puffs.

And I liked the rows with puffs so much I decided to make 5 of them.

After the 3rd row of puffs I decided to decrease a bit, only in the back and on the sides, by decreasing 2 of the 3 rows of sc’s in between the rows of puffs, so that I went from having 5 stitches between puffs to 3!
The puffs are still centered between each other, but the decrease has made the shape of the top nicer. I am some kind of genius me thinks … ;)

Very happy with it. I just have to remember to stick to the 5 stitches again between puffs in the front. Hope the stitches will talk to me when I get there.

17/11/2018
It worked out great :) Just a bit tight - but I’ll get used to it.

I increased by 6 stitches after the waist (i.e. one pattern repeat) and then worked straight.

After doing the first cloud section in the body it reminded me of that Petal Top top which I’ve been dying to do for years, so I used the pattern for that. I only changed the dc’s rows to sc’s, as they were flexible enough.

Also, I wanted to make sure I got to the green part of the yearn, but as it didn’t seem to arrive fast enough I started taking off sections of yarn to make the colour changes arrive faster.

They look a bit more like stripes now than gradient, but I still like it.

Ah, and when I got to the green bit of the Minty Black Velvet, I realised that I didn’t really like the ‘central green yarn. It is a bit like olive green. I had purchased Green Tea Tipple, and the green on there is just so lush and vibrant and deep… I had to have it! So I switched whirl, removed more yarn to make the repeats shorter… and there’s my top! (and a lot of little bundles of yarn) :)

I should have maybe increased it again before the hips, but it’s now too late. :) It’s nice - I’ll get used to it.