Fleur, also know as the Summer Vest Take Two is finished! Finally.

As I said in an earlier post, I haven’t been so excited or inspired to finish this one as my other pieces of wearable crochet. I do love the Hot Cross Bun stitch though (I even made a video about it) and I think I will use it again some day in a scarf or maybe even for a cushion cover, so the problem is not the pattern, it’s me. (Sounds like I’m doing a break-up speech.)

There are a variety of reasons why I had such a hard time finishing Fleur:

1. I had to frog and unravel a whole other crochet project which sort of took away the “newness” and fun out of the project;
2. Once the yarn was unravelled it looked like 2 minute noodles which made it very prone to knots;
3. I had a lot of trouble getting the armhole shaping correct – more on that later;
4. I became a bit bored with the green yarn;
5. There’s doesn’t seem to be any incentive to finish this sleeveless top as Summer seems to have skipped the UK.

Due to the 2 minute noodle factor, there’s a big chunk of yarn that I couldn’t recycle for Fleur which means I had to be very thrifty with what I had. I mentioned this in passing to Hubby and he replied “How about a different colour for the neck? Just putting it out there.” Genius husband of mine! So that’s where the dark green edging (Patons 100% Cotton DK in shade 2727) around the neck and armholes idea came from.

Now for no. 3 on my list. I think there’s a mistake in the pattern. Honestly I do. It’s not just me that couldn’t figure it out. I contacted the only other person on Ravelry who had finished Fleur in size M, and she confirmed that she also had to fudge the armhole shaping. The stitch maths work out perfectly, but the instructions of where to make the decreases at the beginning & end of each row, seemed wrong.

I even contacted Rowan with my problem but to date they haven’t replied to my email. They also don’t have an errata, or as they call it, addendum, on their website for this pattern, so I had to figure it out myself. Just had to “make it work”, Tim Gunn style.

Here is my adaptation of rows 33 to 36 of the armhole shaping in Fleur for size M. I hope it can be of help to anyone else making this top. (The link will open up a PDF document. )

Changes made to Fleur

I’m done with green yarn now. Phew! Next on my list, is Country Deam in the lovely petrol blue Drops Safran yarn. Don’t you just love the start of new crochet projects? Getting your head around the new pattern, getting used to the feel of the new yarn, holding it up every 5 rows just to see how far you’ve crocheted. Oooh, I love it!