Back in end of June in my I Shall Knit and Sew post I talked about restarting knitting after putting it off for many years. Since then I’ve taken on crocheting this lace style cape. As I don’t want to scarify any sewing time, I used my evening commuting hours to make this cape. For me crocheting takes up less space on the train compared to knitting, a crochet hook also fits nicely inside my not so big handbag.

My flower baubles crochet cape

The pattern is taken from this Japanese crochet book which I bought from Japan at least 3 years ago. I can’t read Japanese at all though there are some traditional Chinese characters in the text which I can understand. The book’s title suggests that you can finish a project in 3 days which I think is over optimistic unless you decide to give sleeping a miss!

The Japanese crochet book which I used

I picked this lace style cape with picot edges and flower baubles. For the yarn, I used 3 balls of medium weight super soft merino wool.

The cape pattern I used

Although I can’t read Japanese, I have had much better luck on following pattern diagrams compared to the word by word descriptions in English knitting / crochet pattern books. The diagrams are relatively easy to understand and there’re always some stitch diagrams at the end of the book which explain what each symbol mean.

A glance at the instruction and pattern

This book includes step by step photos for each project which is a bonus.

Step by step diagrams in the book

You can find Japanese knitting / crochet book online through YesAsia or Ebay from Pomadour24 . I did look up Amazon.co.jp but the shipping cost is prohibitively expensive if you want to buy 1 or 2 books only. In order to to create the baubles effect I made 25 crochet flowers.

25 flower baubles are required to finish the edge

Each flower is then attached to the cape as I crochet the scalloped hem with the leaf motifs.

Each flower is separated by a leaf motif

The top and sides of the cape is finished with picot edges to create a lace effect.

The picot top edge

And here’s the back view of the cape.

An overview of the cape

I wanted to have something like a corsage to hold the cape together so I made 3 pieces of crochet flowers, each about 10cm diameter and stitched them together at the back.

Flower shapes for making the corsage

I crocheted a tie using the same yarn behind the corsage and used it to tie the cape.

The flower corsage is used to hold the cape in place

The corsage can also be used as a ‘bracelet’.

The corsage

This cape took me about 3 weeks (not 3 days) to make using my evening commuting time. It’s surprising warm to wear considering the amount of holes in it. As this is the first crochet project since the last one which I did many years ago, it had taken much longer than I anticipated. I also ripped out and redone 4 complete rows once. Since then I make a habit of checking the stitches before moving onto the next row.

Me and the cape

Now let’s finish the Flip Turn dress by this weekend! Wish me luck!