Original Pattern: Veronique

Knitter Extraordinaire: Aimee (Rav Id)

Mods: Made the back portion less voluminous by casting on fewer stitches. Added ruching to the sleeves, using crochet to keep the gathered folds in place. The edging was done as a single crochet cast off, and then has a delicate crochet trim.

What Makes This Awesome: How pretty are those sleeves?! I love that detail. And you saw the word ‘cashmere’ up there, right? I can just imagine how buttery soft this little shrug must be. Or I should say, must have been. You see, Aimee was not entirely happy with it. The sleeves worked out great, but the neckline was problematic- it just kept falling off her shoulders, and you know how frustrating it is to keep fussing with your clothes. So, she didn’t wear it. And rather than waste delicious, delicious cashmere… she frogged it.  Her new plan is to knit up the Whisper Cardi in the same yarn, and incorporate the same sleeve detail that she tried on this project. I really commend Aimee on this. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of a knit that just didn’t quite meet your needs, and you keep delaying that trip to the frog pond, even though you know it’s the best thing.I can’t wait to see it knitted up as the Whisper Cardi with the sleeve detail!

I’ve always thought that the best part about Ralvery and the community of knitters is to share what works and what doesn’t, so that others can learn from the process and be inspired, or at least just see the danger zones. So, I scoured the Ravelry project pages to see what others had done with Veronique, and it turns out that most people had this problem with the lack of shoulder structure, and seem to just treat it like a shawl with sleeves. 

 I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I can only think of two straightforward possibilities to fix that problem: either deliberately make the shoulder section in smaller size than called for in the pattern, or just let it fall off one shoulder for an “oh no, my sexy bare shoulder keeps escaping from this delicate shrug, whatever can I do!” sort of thing. I’d channel my imaginary self inner French Girl and be all mysterious and alluring, with my bare shoulder. Naturally there would be candlelight. Except I don’t think my husband would take me seriously at all if he thought for a moment I was flirting with him, especially with a bare shoulder. So… I guess I’d make it smaller.

Put on your problem solving hats, everyone- if you were going to knit
this, and you knew that the shoulders were going to slip off and
generally give you problems, what would you do differently?