I have a delightful friend, Chrissy.

She has been stressed and under-the-weather since before Christmas. I feel bad that I can’t do more to help her out, but I thought that the least I could do is make her something cozy to lounge in while she’s feeling bad.

She already has two different shawls that I’ve crocheted so I didn’t want to make another prayer shawl for her. I decided to make her a sweater instead. It needed to be cozy and comfy without being too involved. Not that I’m lazy, but I have a lot of things going on so I didn’t want it to take me two months to complete.

I turned to The Secret Yarnery for inspiration. Christa always has simple and easy-to-follow instructions for the garments that she designs. She even has tutorials posted on YouTube for most of them so if you have a problem you can watch her as much as you need in order to get things sorted out. With that in mind I decided to make the Tammy Sweater that she designed last fall.

Please ignore the model… you get what you pay for (which isn’t much in this case).

This was going to be a surprise for Chrissy so I didn’t want to ask her to try on the sweater as I was crocheting it. I figured that if I didn’t make it very loose on myself, that it should fit her okay. One of my coworkers is about Chrissy’s size so I asked her to try it on when I was finished just to see how it looked. I thought it looked okay.

I used Red Heart Unforgettable yarn. I was not impressed, but you can read about that in this post. What I was impressed with was the pattern that Christa created.

I prefer to have written instructions in front of me, so even though Christa has a YouTube tutorial on the sweater, I went ahead and purchased her pattern from her website. After all, it was her creativity that put this out there for me to make. Don’t be afraid to use her patterns, either. They are written in plain English without the use of crochet abbreviations. She writes out ‘double crochet’ instead of using ‘dc’, etc. It makes the instructions a little longer, but it also gives her a chance to add additional info if needed. If you’re new to crochet this is a very helpful way to read a pattern.

Another thing about Christa’s patterns is that she doesn’t size them. By that I mean she doesn’t tell you to chain so many for size small, so many for size large, etc. What she tells you is to chain as many as you need to make it the length you want. Now, if you need to be told exactly each step piece-by-piece, you may not like her patterns. She then goes on to tell you how to figure out where to put your arm holes, how to figure out where the neck line in the back should be, etc.

If the thought of crocheting a sweater intimidates you then you definitely need to crochet the Tammy Sweater. You can’t make a sweater pattern any easier! Yes, there is counting, but that’s the most difficult part of the garment. It took me two months to complete my sister’s cardigan, which required piecing and joining. The Tammy Sweater took me barely two weeks.

I do plan on crocheting this again for myself. When I have the time. HA! It’s definitely going on my list of easy-to-make garments that I will happily make many times over.