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Goldenrod is a beginner/intermediate crochet pattern by Eleven Handmade using 4ply yarn. The pattern can be purchased here.

So when I saw that Linda Skuja of Eleven Handmade was having a crazy pattern sale, I leaped at the chance to make myself some beautiful slow fashion pieces. As well as Goldenrod, I purchased the Bruni top, Overly Sweater and Textured Crew.

I don’t have a lot of 4ply in my stash aside from the Drops Safran I’ve been hoarding for a while now with no project in mind – so I fished out some beautiful boysenberry-coloured yarn and got right to it.

The pattern is designed for two sizes. Rudimentarily put- small or big. Being around a 12-14 UK dress size I opted for the smaller of the two. It’s well written, and the first few rounds were simple to understand. But although my gauge was bang on, the sweater started to seem “gappy”.

I kept double checking that I had the right yarn weight and gauge, which I did, but all the photos of the sweater by other Ravelry users didn’t show holes this big. Was I doing something wrong?

I scoured the Projects section of the pattern on Ravelry and found a user who had completed two of these sweaters previously and mentioned that on her second sweater she increased and decreased the stitches throughout to give the appearance of more ‘fullness’. So effectively every stitch was doubled. But it did give a more closed look in the end.

I used about 10 balls of the Dark Heather and didn’t complete all the sweater body rounds or sleeves. It fits me perfectly.

The puff stitches are reasonably neat. I found that sometimes if my tension changed even minutely while completing them, there were some looser strands. I’m hoping with wear and wash these will even out.

I also didn’t complete the bpdc and fpdc mock ribbing at the bottom because I found it made everything too tight. Instead I opted for simple rows of UK double crochet to finish.

Overall it’s a beautiful design, but does require a moderately experienced crocheter to manipulate the pattern to suit them. This is my first Eleven Handmade pattern so I’ll be interested to see how the next one goes…