I’ve had the yarn and pattern for this since 2005! finally found the courage to start it, helped by the fact it might actually fit me when I finish it.

At first I found parts of the pattern a little baffling, but by just following the instructions it mostly came out right and I’ve now got the hang of the flower design: though there are certainly a few errors and at least one flower with only 3 petals: and I did have to pull back 2 rows and completely redo them because of an error as I started the first which wasn’t clear until I came to turn the work again.

Making progress now, and only concerned that I may not have enough yarn, and that perhaps my gauge is a little large and I will have very long sleeves. We’ll see! The pattern doesn’t give any hints on gauge sadly.

17th July: Decided to cut out two of the repeats as I was short of yarn, and it seemed likely to be big enough anyway. So as instructed I did rows 2-4 again, but then it said I’d need to join on row 5. Row 5 would have been starting a new set of flowers though, which wouldn’t sensibly join up. So I did row 5 thinking I’d do another row 2 and join on that: but that didn’t match up. It looks like I should actually have joined on row 4. So I pulled back row 5 again and figured I’d either sew together instead of crocheting or just leave it as a flat shawl. And having finished the end of the sleeve that needed doing I’ve decided to leave it as a shawl.