Oops! This Time for Real: Stitch Seven!

Well, I made a mistake last time I posted.  I didn't consult the book, just started typing about the next stitch, and instead of stitch seven, I actually posted about stitch eight.  So here in all its glory is the real stitch seven!

The overall effect of this stitch is to make very angular ripples, at least when you use my color pattern.  Lines of narrow holes run vertically throughout the pattern.  I like this stitch because it makes a distinct ripple pattern, but it does square off at the end, making the addition of a  border not a chore.  It's reasonably fast to work, though never totally mindless.  There are some complicated stitches, though easy to understand, care is needed to not drop loops or pull through too many loops.  Also, whenever you have to do a large number of one stitch in a single spot, counting becomes an issue. 

Although I like this stitch, I still prefer Stitch 4 from Triple Play Pattern Stitches for squared off ripples.   However, it is always nice to have another good option.  This made a nice baby blanket, and would make nice blankets as well.  I think it would make a particularly beautiful shawl, either solid colored or striped.

Without further ado:
Color Pattern:
1 row of white, (2 rows of maroon, 2 rows of white) repeated, ending with a single row of white, and a maroon border.

Chain 90, then work the stitch until work is square.
Add the standard border to complete.

Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 4: (sc, ch 3, sk 1) around, (sc, ch 3, sc in same stitch) at corner

I used Simply Soft yarn in Burgundy and White with a J hook to make this blanket.

At it again: Stitch Eight!

Trying so many new stitches constantly gets frustrating after a while because when I find one that I like, I picture all of the ways I could use the stitch in various projects.  To then have to immediately move on to an entirely new stitch without making any of the wonderful things I've imagined is not fun.  So, I took a break from investigating new stitches to actually make things other than baby blankets with the good ones I'd already found.

But, now I'm back to trying them out, and have stitch 8.  This stitch is fairly quick and relatively mindless.  It does have a picot stitch in it, which I'm generally not too fond of.  The result of the picot is that it's not completely mindless, and there are little nubs of yarn sticking up at regular intervals along the fabric.  This gives it a whimsical feel.  Though this is not my favorite stitch, it is different enough for it to be potentially useful.  I'm not sure what else I'd use it for, but it does make a nice baby blanket.

The color pattern I used is 2 rows of orange, then (2 rows of green, 2 rows of orange) repeated, with a green border.

In any case, here's the pattern:
Chain 90, then work stitch until work is square.  Add the standard border to complete.
Border:
Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in corner
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in corner
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in corner
Round 4: (sc, ch 3, sk 1) around, (sc, ch 3, sc in same stitch) at corner

I made this with Lion Brand Pound of Love baby yarn in Pastel Green and Cream-sickle with a J hook.

Doily Mania: May Orchids

The stereotypical item to crochet is a doily.  Doilies today serve little purpose: they're just decorative, and very few people have any use for them.  Therefore, I never thought I'd get into making them.  Then my friend Lynnette told me that they were her favorite thing to make, or at least, thread crochet was here favorite.  I've always liked making blankets, with my trusty J hook, but figured I'd see what all the fuss was about.  I made several attempts and just could not get into it.

I worked on a doily in maroon, because that way it'd at least be an Aggie doily, for months more than a year ago.  It was tedious, stressful, and somewhat painful to my hands.  Reading doily patterns takes some getting used to, there are some tricks to it that I didn't understand, which made me have to improvise because I read the pattern wrong.  Also, you can't really do anything while working on one because the pattern changes every round.  This attempt ended when my roughly three month old puppy discovered that the ball of thread would roll, and proceeded to play with it all over the living room, tangling it around, under and through the couch and other furniture, pulling out hours of work in the process.  At that point, I just gave up and haven't touched it since.

The main reason I don't like doily thread is that it's so small I can't really see my stitches, and working with a size 5 hook literally hurts my hands.  So, I decided to try the size 3 thread, which is ironically bigger than the size 10 thread, working with an E hook.  The results were okay: my hands didn't hurt, I could see what I was doing, but it was impossible to make things small.  I wanted to make butterflies to put on clips for little girls hair, but they were just too big.

Then a few weeks ago, while perusing the yarn selection at my local Joann's store, I ran across something interesting: size 5 thread!  Size 10 was too small, size 3 was too big, so maybe size 5 would be perfect.  It was Bernat Handicrafter Crochet Thread.  I bought some purple, Orchid, and green thread, fully expecting it to sit in my stash forever, because I thought I'd never get around to doilies when I had afghans to make.  Anyway, I did get around to it, rather quickly actually, so that I wouldn't forget, and I love this thread!  You can see your stitches, it doesn't hurt your hands to work with it, and it's not too big.  I also bought a size 5 hook with a bamboo handle to use for this, and the bamboo handle makes a huge difference. 

I decided to give my one book of doily patterns, A Year of Doily Patterns: Book 5,  another try, and started on the May doily.  I mentioned earlier that there are some tricks to reading doily patterns.  One of the most important is to not turn unless you're specifically told to do so.  Well, I didn't know that, so I turned after every round, which made the pattern not line up.  To compensate, I had to reinterpret the pattern for every round, which led to some problems.  It wasn't until I had actually completed the entire doily, and was taking pictures of it and generally admiring it, that I realized I couldn't fold it properly.  Nothing lined up.  Then I counted, and somehow I had ended up with 7 pineapples instead of the 8 that should have been there.  In any case, it lays flat and I like it, so I just have a slightly skewed doily now. 

Making that doily only whetted my appetite for doily making.  I went out and bought more of the thread, and searched ravelry for more patterns.  I've now made several (I'll post more of them later), and will probably continue to make these beautiful but pointless creations.

Blended Arrows Blanket

My plans to make a blanket out of the Blended Arrows stitch were thwarted for a while because Hobby Lobby is reorganizing their yarn department.  The consequence was that I could not get any white yarn for about six weeks.  It was a glorious day when I discovered they had finally restocked and I could finally finish this blanket.

This blanket was by far the most time consuming project I've done yet, but it was worth it.  It is the thickest, warmest, most solid blanket I've made.  Have you ever heard knitters scornfully say that they don't like crochet because there are too many holes?  This is my answer to that complaint.  If you want a warm, solid fabric, and time isn't really an issue, this stitch is for you.

Here's how to make this:
Color Pattern:

5 rows of yellow, (6 rows each of blue, white, green, yellow) repeated, ending with 2 rows of green.  The border is done in blue.

Chain 201, then work the Blended Arrows stitch.
Border:
Round 1: sc around; 3 sc in corner
Round 2: dc around; 5 dc in corner
Round 3: sc around; 3 sc in corner
Round 4: dc around; 5 dc in corner
Round 5: sc around; 3 sc in corner

I made this with I Love this Yarn in Hot Yellow, Peacock (blue), Limelight (green), and White with a J hook.

Puffing Along: Stitch Six!

Stitch six is the next installment in this series.  It grows fairly rapidly and produces a pretty, lacy fabric.  If you like puff stitches, this one is worth trying.  Personally, I don't like puff stitches, so I'm not really a fan of this one.  There is so much variation in puff stitches because each person does them differently, having different tensions in the thread.  Mine naturally come out tight, thick, and stumpy.  I have to consciously think about each stitch to make them looser.  My friend Lynnette makes light and puffy puff stitches, so I know it's doable, just not for me.  I doubt I'll reuse this stitch as written.  I conceivably would reuse it if I replaced the puff stitches with clusters.

Here's the pattern:
Chain 91, then work stitch until it's square.  Add the normal border to complete.
Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in corner
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in corner
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in corner
Round 4: (sc, ch 3, sk 1) around, (sc, ch 3, sc in same stitch) at corner

I made this with Baby Bee Sweet Delight yarn in Precious Ombre and a J hook.

Back to it: Stitch Five!

Getting back to 50 Stitches for Afghans, here's stitch five.  Normally, I would have tried this in a different color pattern than that found in the book, but not for this one.  The point of this stitch is to have essentially a grid of tiles, some solid, some not.  Having multiple colors would distract from this, so I decided to make it a solid color.  The stitch itself is easy to work and grows at the speed of dc, which is nice.  I like the overall effect of this stitch, but I'm not sure what I'd use it for.  It would make a pretty tablecloth if you were willing to work with small thread. 

In any case, here's what I did

:
Chain 87, then work stitch until square.  Add the standard border to finish.
Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in corner
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in corner
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in corner
Round 4: (sc, ch 3, sk 1) around, (sc, ch 3, sc in same stitch) at corner

I made this with Bernat Baby Coordinates Tangerine Dream yarn and a J hook.

Sunshine Blanket

It's springtime again, and that means wedding time.  Another of my buddies just got married, so I crocheted a blanket for the happy couple.  The colors were yellow and coral, which actually don't go that well together as I discovered when I began planning this afghan.  The closest color to coral was a light peach color, which is actually rather hideous unless you're going for cream-sickle, and even then it's not that great.  Instead, I decided to use a variegated yarn that transitioned between different shades of yellow and pink.  Like the name of the color, Perpetual Sunshine, the combination is a happy one.  Hopefully the couple will like the blanket I crafted for them.

When I planned this blanket, I forgot one very important detail: stitch 2 doesn't expand like most stitches.  Consequently, I didn't chain enough at the beginning to make it an acceptable width.  To fix this, I simply made the border extra wide.  Despite this foible, I am happy with the result.

Here's what I did:
Chain 167, then work stitch 2 until work reaches desired length.  Add this border:
Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 4: (cluster, ch 3, sk 2) around, (cluster, ch 3, cluster, ch 3, cluster) in corner
Round 5: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 6: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 7: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 8: (dc, ch 1, sk 1) around, (dc, ch 1, dc, ch 1, dc) in corner
Round 9: (dc, ch 1, sk 1) around, (dc, ch 1, dc, ch 1, dc) in corner
Round 10: (dc, ch 1, sk 1) around, (dc, ch 1, dc, ch 1, dc) in corner
Round 11: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 12: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 13: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 14: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 15: (dc, ch 1, sk 1) around, (dc, ch 1, dc, ch 1, dc) in corner
Round 16: (dc, ch 1, sk 1) around, (dc, ch 1, dc, ch 1, dc) in corner
Round 17: (dc, ch 1, sk 1) around, (dc, ch 1, dc, ch 1, dc) in corner
Round 18: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 19: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 20: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 21: (cluster, ch 3, sk 2) around, (cluster, ch 3, cluster, ch 3, cluster) in corner
Round 22: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 23: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 24: sc around, 3 sc in each corner

I made this with I Love this Yarn in Perpetual Sunshine and a J hook.