Now, I quite enjoy the Mass Effect games. It’s a neat story line, and Charles plays the games so thoroughly that we never miss a single plot point or line of enquiry. As a crocheter, though, I would be remiss if I didn’t use the time he was wrapped up in his game to make something cool.

Those of you who are mildly familiar with Mass Effect 3 are probably saying, “but ME3 hasn’t been released yet!”. To which those of you are are quite familiar with it would reply, “ah, but they released a demo of the game as a free download ahead of time.”

In the spirit of this “demo” version of the game, I decided to try playing with Jacob’s Ladders to see what they could do.

After a few swatches…

I was ready to go!

This bears repeating: Charles plays these games quite thoroughly, exploring what is possible with every type of character, so, after the first day:

Then the second:

The four days later:

He shot enemies, I crocheted:

Five days:

Only to finish eight days after I started:

Here are some close-ups (click to enlarge!) :

Here’s the front compared to the back:

Only one question remains: what the heck am I going to make during the actual game now?

It took more than two and a half months to complete. Weaving in the ends took longer than the actual crocheting part! Would you believe that there were a whopping 1040 ends to weave in on this blanket? 1040. Crazy.

It is made up of one-round granny squares, joined using this join-as-you-go method (because if I had to make all of the squares first and then join them all together afterwards, this blanket would never have been made!).

The real challenge here wasn’t the many, many ends to weave in. It was actually the lack of real estate to actually do the weaving. One of the benefits of using that joining method is that any square can be removed without disturbing the surrounding squares, which would be ruined by traveling the ends from one square to another. So, each end had to be woven in with only 12 stitches to work with. 1040 times.

But you know what?

He was over the moon about it!

Totally worth it. ^_^

Below the cut, you will see the items I have made so far, but with no names attached. If you are on my gift-giving list and want to be surprised, I recommend that you do not continue with this post!

For the rest of you, I’ll include the pattern source when possible. ^_^

Spiderman Blanket This took six days to make.

Crayon Blanket (made it up as I went!). This took seven days to make.

I’m particularly proud of this one for the amount of thinking ahead I did – I wanted to match the sc border on each of the crayons to the colours in the crayon AND whip stitch the crayons together using the same colour again, so when I changed colours for the black stripes, I left super duper long ends. I then used those ends for the sc border and for whip stitching.

Star Blanket. This one only took two days.

All blankets used Bernat Satin and a 5mm hook.

I’m on fire!

That’s my outside-in granny square. It looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

While in Calgary (and hiding from the rain and cold), I decided to try this on a grand scale. My goal: to make a one-big-granny-square blanket working from the outside-in.

I went to Michaels (did you know that Calgary has at least FIVE Michaels stores? Five. For the record, that is 5 times as many as Toronto has, and we just got ours recently.) and picked up some Bernat Baby Jaquard yarn that had blue and green striping in it.

If you look closely at those last two pictures, you’ll see how I ran out of the blue/green yarn (which should have been my first clue something had gone awry… 3 balls should have been enough for the size of blanket I was aiming for) and I had to buy more yarn. They were out of the blue/green, so I picked up some blue/white and kept going.

*sigh*

That crazy folding going on in the middle? It seems that the angles on my blanket are not 90 degrees like they should have been. They were more like the kind of angles you might find on a hexagon… except that there were only four of them, and not six.

I don’t know why this happened; I followed the same pattern I used on that little red square at the top of this post. Was it the yarn? I don’t know.

The real question here, though, is: how on earth did I get so far into making this before realizing that it just wasn’t laying flat? I was taking pictures during the whole process, which involved laying the thing out on the bed at regular intervals.

The answer can only be: denial.

The up side? Apparently even when suffering from denial, you can end up with a quirky poncho!

After Ponoka, we drove for what seemed like 17 days (but was more like 5 or 6 hours…) to the ranch. During the drive, we went through no fewer than 3 massive storms.

It’s important to understand something here: Charles has been telling me since we met that he just loves it when it rains because it very rarely did so in Alberta. Perhaps we have global warming to blame, or perhaps I bring rain with me wherever I go, but if there is one thing I can say about the trip to Alberta, over all, is that it was wet. Really wet.

In Charles’ defense, though, he grew up on the ranch, and while we were on the ranch, it was bright and sunny.

The pictures of the sky on our trip from Ponoka to the ranch are on Charles’ Xoom (because I was too busy driving to take pictures) and I don’t have them yet. They’ll have to be in another post!

Anyhow, back to the shawl… I can not emphasize this enough: if you are going to attempt to make a Seraphina’s Shawl: CHECK FOR ERRATA. Seriously.

When I first found the pattern on Ravelry, I saw that it was linked to the designer’s website, and also to a forum post on Crochetville. I knew that there was errata, but I assumed (to my folly) that the pattern on the designer’s website had been updated with the changes. Also, it had step-by-step pictures! How could I go wrong?

I saved the whole page before getting on the plane. Ye gads. The thing is rife with errors. I consider myself to be a fairly advanced crocheter, so I put my considerable experience to the task and… well, it IS shawl-shaped… but don’t ask me how I got it that way.

The really fun part came after I was off the plane and out of Internet-free Ponoka, when I finally had Internet access again, but I still couldn’t fix the shawl because it was mostly done. No, even though I now had the correct stitch counts (I think!), I had to figure out what I had done on the plane so that I could continue with THAT pattern instead…

It was madness!

In other news… hey look! I finished a blanket!

Actually, I finished this some time ago! It is living happily (and no doubt dry-ly) at the ranch. Merry Christmas!

This blanket was made using Bernat Berella 4, in a variation on my Oddly Linked Blanket pattern (the pattern for which is for sale here: http://fantasticmio.com/shop/ )

As I am not the kind of crocheter who suffers from flights of fancy, and always, always finishes a project before moving on to the next, I never have this problem. (Hey, reader: you’re supposed to be quietly surfing the Internet right now, not snickering at your monitor! :P) But I like to help out where I can, so… crochet from the outside-in!

I’ve shown this technique before (remember that granny square?), but this is the first time I’ve tried it on a larger scale.

This blanket measures approximately 4′ square, and is composed entirely of dc stitches, with dc5tog on the corners:

Look!

The trick to doing a square this way, is to start exactly in the centre of a side, and to make sure that the stitches on a side (not including the corner) are evenly divisible by 4.

So, for this blanket, I started by doing 80 fdc stitches (that’s foundation double crochet), doing a fdc5tog (foundation double crochet 5 together decrease), then 160 fdc, fdc5tog, 160 fdc, fdc5tog, 160 fdc, fdc5tog, 80 fdc, and join. From there on, it was just a case of working one dc into each stitch, and working a dc5tog at the corners (into the dc5tog of the previous round and two dc stitches on either side of it).

You have to be very, very careful when joining the first round. Make extra sure that you haven’t twisted it! I laid mine out on a table to double check.

Once it was joined, though, it was super easy, and to my surprise, the blanket remained portable for longer than it would have had I started in the middle. Working the first 20 or so rounds felt a lot like making a really, really long scarf.

The best part, though, was that each subsequent round was shorter than the previous round, so it felt like I was speeding towards the finish, which you may recognise as being the opposite feeling to what you normally get when making a blanket in the round. :)

Here’s a closer look at the middle:

For the last round, the middle round, I had planned to do 4 dc5tog’s, but by the time I got there I decided to try something different – I did 10 dc2tog’s instead. After you do the join, you use the tail to weave in and out of the tops of the stitches, and pull the hole closed like a drawstring.

You should try it! And if you do, let me know!

This is only my first attempt (and holy moly, following the pattern was somewhat gruelling), but I think I’ve got the basics down.

Basically, the trick is to mostly work into the back loop only, so that when you go to make the stitches over the the front of the piece, you can work them into the exposed front loops. (You also sometimes do front post stitches).

It makes a very cushy fabric. I haven’t decided what to do with this yet. Despite the fact that it has a LOT of single crochets in it, it’s still pretty stretchy.

One of my guild members has made this and made it the centre of a really neat-looking blanket. So… I might do that. lol

Oh, and here’s the back:

Perhaps, despite the terrible quality of this picture, you can see the problem I ran into:

Hint: the bottom is supposed to be straight.

Experienced crocheters would look at this swatch and say: the base chain is too tight! Go up a hook size and try to stay loose.

Alas, that isn’t the problem at all. How do I know this? Because I didn’t use a base chain, I used chainless foundation single crochet stitches.

Given my experience with other patterns that I have failed at, I have come to the conclusion that my problem is, in fact, that my single crochet stitches are too small when compared to my other stitches.

At least I’m innovative with my gauge problems!

Anyhow, I really wanted to start working on this sweater, though, so I’ve decided to go down in yarn thickness (the swatch was Bernat Satin, the yarn I settled on is Bernat Satin Sport). I used a 5mm hook for the round of sc foundation stitches, and then a 4.25mm hook for the rest.

(The bottom looks curved in this picture, but that’s only because it’s a tube and I didn’t want the front and back to overlap in the picture)

I’m going to need to figure out a way around this single crochet problem, though. There are lots of patterns out there that have sc mixed in with other stitches in a single row, and I can’t keep switching hooks.

In other news… I finished the boring, just-a-bunch-of-dc-stitches baby blanket I was working on as a counterpoint to the flower blanket:

(That’s just a plain old hexagon pattern worked until I ran out of yarn; 2 balls of Mary Maxim Sugar Baby Stripes in Tutti Fruitti with a 3.75mm hook)

And I’ve made two more Spiral Hex blankets:

(Shot artfully in a fruitless attempt to make them look like some other pattern)

As for what I’m working on now, well, that pink sweater is at the “need-to-consult-the-pattern-often” stage now, and so is now on the “work-on-it-at-home” WIP pile. My current “avoid-smacking-people-on-the-subway” project is…

… well, never mind what it is…

And then:

(Bernat Satin, 4ish balls, 5mm hook)

Then I tried it with a new yarn:

(Lion Brand Homespun, 2 balls, 6.5mm hook)

And again:

(Lion Brand Homespun, 2 balls, 6.5mm hook)
The colours in this one remind me of macaroni and cheese with ketchup.

And again:

(Lion Brand Homespun, 2 balls, 6.5mm hook)
This one reminds me of Saint Patrick’s Day!

I feel like I should go knit on the Doctor Who scarf for a little while, but I just want to make more of these spiral blankets!

Of course, my first instinct in a situation like this (or, to be fair, in ANY situation) is to crochet.

There’s a common expression that states that the fastest way to get rid of an illness is to give it to someone else, and so this is what I made:

It might be hard to see that the pattern is a sprial in that picture, so here’s a close-up of the middle:

How’s your head?

Honestly, I don’t believe that expression for a minute. I mean, it’s pretty ridiculous, right?

Back to the blanket! I used the pattern here: Pamapaloza: Spiral Hex, with 3 full balls of Bernat Satin “Florals” (variegated), and in the solid Bernat Satin in “Sultana”, I used 2 full balls, and the yarn barf from the third (maybe 1/3 of the ball? or 1/4?), and a 5mm hook. It’s 3′ across from side to side.

I did the ending differently from the original. Several stitches away from a corner, with the variegated, I switched to hdc stitches, did a bunch of those, then switched to sc and worked almost to the corner. On the last stitch before the corner, I did a slip stitch, then another into the corner space. With the solid, I did double crochets over the hdc’s, then hdc into the sc’s, then sc up to and into the corner, then finished off.

This was a really neat pattern to do, and there was no cutting the yarn invovled (well, I lie, I did cut the yarn once when the solid got tangled up in a secondary yarn barf and I was too sick to deal with it), and the end weaving was really just at the beginning and ends of the balls.

I’m definitely going to have to make another one of these!

Where did I come across this pattern? In the 11 Blankets for 2011 thread in the Crochet Liberation Front’s Ravelry group (you need to be logged in to see it).

How’s your head now?

But like I said, I don’t really believe there’s any truth to that expression… but it is suspicious that I saw that blanket for the first time only a couple of days before my migraine hit.

Very suspicious indeed…

How’s your head? I’ll ask you again in a couple of days…