fantasticmio.com

I have your answer!

First, a little back story:

When I crochet, I can usually stop just about anywhere. If you need me to get up and do something, or if it’s time to go to bed, or back to work, or get off the streetcar, I just go until there is only one loop left on my hook, then I pull on that loop so that it’s quite large. I then put my hook away, my project down, and off I go. It takes seconds! Easy peasy!

Enter: the enablers. The pushers. Also known as my possible-future-sister-in-law (*pokes Charles*), Beth, and one of the crocheters she’s following on Twitter (who I am now following, too), Vashti Braha.

They introduced me to a Tunisian crochet technique involving 3 strands of yarn.

Instructions, in a nut shell:

Tunisian crochet is worked in two steps: drawing up all of the loops, and working all of the loops off. (See this tutorial).

With this 3 strand method, you work the loops on in colour A, then off with colour B. Then work loops for the next row on with colour C, then work them off with colour A.

Repeat. Like I could stop you!

Here is my first attempt:

I used plain, worsted weight yarn (Bernat Satin); scraps left over from various projects (mostly the Catan blanket). When one colour ran out, I replaced it with another plain colour. I had intended on doing a few rows just to see how it worked and what it looked like, and this is what I ended up with.

Literally, my afternoon and evening went thusly: *reach one end* “Ooh! New colour!” *reach the other end* “Ooh! New colour!” over and over again.

The entertainment wouldn’t end!

In my haste to find a project to bring with me to work today, I thought I’d try it with different yarn, you know, too see how it works up.

Here it is in Bernat Soft Boucle, all three strands stripe in two shades of the colour (tan/brown, lt green/dk green, lt blue/dk blue)

That’s right! In my effort to try it with something different I’ve manage to just about do the *exact* opposite of what I did with the first one.

Go me!

The problem? There’s no easy stopping point. I’m using a double-ended hook (because I’m *nuts*) so putting it down when all of the loops have been worked onto the hook isn’t a good idea. I tried that, and lost four loops. And when you get to the end of working them all off, you need to pull a loop of the next colour through the last too loops on the hook, so I’m not too comfortable stopping at that point, either. I’m trying out “working a handful of loops onto the hook” then putting it down. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

So, if you’ve ever turned away from crocheting an afghan because of a short attention span (and yes, I do see the irony in the length of this post given the target audience…) this may be your answer. It’s possible I’m just easily amused, but I find it hard to put this down (just ignore the fact that I’ve got two of these on the go right now. It’s meaningless).

Give it a go! And let me know how it went!