What is it? Well, you sign up, are assigned a group, your group rides the TTC (knitting all the while, or possibly crocheting since I’ll be there ^_-) to four yarn shops, and all of the groups meet up at the end to compare purchases and get prizes. At least, that’s the description I’ve been given; this is my first year participating!

I will, of course, be blogging after the fact, to let you know how it went and show you what I bought! In the mean time, you can watch my Twitter feed (or the box over there on the right side of this page) for updates! I’m going to try to take pictures and tell interesting tidbits of stories throughout the day. You don’t need to sign up for Twitter in order to follow me tomorrow, just go to http://twitter.com/fantasticmio and possibly refresh the page as the day progresses, and you shouldn’t miss a thing!

Things kick off at 11am (Eastern)!

Until then, check out the progress on my “Eventually Granny Square” blanket:

It just needs the border and then I’ll have an actual finished object to show off! This one is special in that I don’t know who it’s going to be for yet. Once I’m finished I’ll do up a pattern for those who want to try it at home. If you’re new-ish to crochet and are going to try this, I suggest you learn how to make a traditional Granny Square first. (I do 2ch in the corners, and no ch stitches anywhere else, but this pattern should work just fine with any pattern that has the Granny Square look to it… in fact, ANY square that has the “granny” border on it would work)

Anyhow, it’s not a hard pattern at all; the only part I had to figure out, really, was the valleys between the squares, and it’s actually pretty easy to do. ^_^

I know there aren’t any “crochet police” so you can do whatever you want, but honestly, please feel free to actually *finish* a blanket. Any blanket.

I only bring this up because, despite the fact that you have more in-progress blankets than you can *find*, you still started two more in the last 3 days.

You know I still love you, regardless of what you do,
mio

I’ve been silent because of a combination of “working on presents for people who read the blog” and “working on getting a pattern published”.

I’ve been over-thinking about this for about a month now, and I’ve finally made a decision! I’m off work because of the G20 Summit being hosted in Toronto this weekend, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to post the pattern for the Oddly Linked Blanket.

If you’re on Ravelry, you’ll find the pattern here: Oddly Linked Blanket.

If you’re not on Ravelry, you should still be able to buy it by clicking on the button below to be taken directly to the PayPal page:

You would be paying $2.00 USD for the pattern for the blanket. I’d say it’s an easy-intermediate level blanket, with one tricky part that is clearly (I hope!) explained using both text and lots of pictures.

Once you get the hang of the special stitch, the blanket works up quickly! Use any smooth, solid coloured yarn with an appropriate hook for best results. I think a variegated yarn would work well, but one with long runs of colours would work best.

One last note: I know that this pattern looks like it might have a lot of ends to weave in, but it has exactly as many as you’d expect with that many colour changes; so 2 ends per stripe of colour.

This morning I started trying some of the patterns. Now, this is a book made up of crochet border patterns (obviously), and while each pattern also has a “in rows” version, they are primarily meant to be worked in the round. Specifically, around *something*.

I wanted to get started right away, though, and I didn’t want to have to fuss with the math of getting the right number of sc stitches around a motif, or for that matter, wasting time making the motif to begin with (before you say it: most of the motifs I have worked up already are not square, and would have lead to even more math. Time’s a tickin’!)

I tried the first border I had bookmarked (#26), using the “in rows” version and felt that I didn’t really get a good feel for the border as half of the stitches were backwards. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal to me, but this was a stitch of particular interest because I’d never heard of it before.

So… there’s a border I want to try, I want to do it in the round, and flat, and don’t feel like making a motif of some sort first. What did I do?

Thank you chainless foundation sc!

Someone on Twitter asked me once (and I appologize for not answering your question there, I didn’t see it until just recently!), how I come up with design ideas. Apparently the answer is: laziness and happy accidents. ^_^

See the last post for a close-up of the stitches. This pattern is being tested right now (and that’s terribly exciting!). More information to come!

Ladies and gentlemen, I have mastered the bullion stitch!

Tutorial to come just as soon as I get more batteries!

Those of you with blogs may have come across another phenomenon where you think that you’ve blog about something only to find that you forgot about it completely.

Those two phenomena have come together to create this post!

If you have a particularly long memory, you may remember this post where I talked about a mystery project that was to become a gift for someone who reads this blog. Well, that someone was Charles! Unfortunately, the poor fellow got to experience yet another phenomenon that comes with being involved with a Fiber Fan: the half-finished gift.

For those not following the project on Ravelry, here’s how it went:

Charles saw the baby blanket I made using green, blue, and brown yarn, and really liked it. Said it was a shame it wasn’t bigger! I slyly told him that I’d gotten the yarn at a really cheap price and that usually means that they’ve stopped making it. Then, the next time I was out, I went to Zellers and bought them out. teehee

I then started the search for a really long 9mm Tunisian hook. I had no luck, so I ended up using the 14″ long, 9mm double-end hook I had and hoped for the best.

I started with a base chain of 165 stitches and got to work. I worked on it whenever Charles wasn’t around; I worked on it at the laundromat, and on my commute. In an instance where I was caught having to get off the subway at my stop mid-row, I learned how to crochet and walk at the same time.

Of course, the blanket soon got to big to carry around with me anywhere, and too big to hide at home. So, I started hiding it at work! I was able to work on it while scanning books (ah, the good ol’ days when I had a working scribe!) and on my breaks. Then my heart nearly stopped when it went missing! I finally found it hiding behind an open door, and decided it needed to come back home again.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get Charles the coffee bean grinder I’d planned on getting him (and the store didn’t offer gift cards. What kind of store doesn’t offer gift cards??), so when the blanket was about this big:

It went into a box, with the stitches carefully held on a piece of scrap yarn and the three balls of yarn neatly re-wound and tucked in the bottom, wrapped, and presented to him on his birthday.

He liked it, but of course, he’s been on my back about finishing it ever since I finished that Ladybug blanket. The joke around here has been, “Well, I gave you half of a blanket for your birthday last year, so maybe you’ll get half of a blanket for your birthday this year!” Still, now that he knows about it, I can work on it when he’s around.

Here is the latest picture of it:

The tape measure has finally given up and started to tell me the truth; the blanket HAS gotten bigger since the last time I measured… by about 6 inches.

The question is, will it actually be finished by his next birthday? Only time will tell!

Not bad for only working on them on the subway and on my lunch breaks at work!

I’m still debating how I want to join them together. Whip-stitch will probably look best, but sc might give it a bit more stability… I’ll have to experiment!

It was full of happiness:

See that yellow-ish yarn peeking through on the left side of the box? I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with that yarn… it was cheap, and I like self-striping yarn, and I got 10 balls of it, just in case. (I also got 10 balls of a pink-and-white striping yarn of the same type).

Then it hit me, when I was almost finished that green-and-cream dishcloth from the last post: this yarn would look fantastic in the swirly-hexagon motif!

So, I started the dishcloth pattern again, but with 30ch to begin (instead of 15 for the dishcloths). I did try 15 sts originally, but I found that each wedge was *almost* a single colour, and that wouldn’t really look nice, in my opinion, so I decided to go big.

Here is the result, pinned out (colours a bit off) :

Here’s a close-up, it’s a bit fuzzy, but the colour is more accurate:

And it’s quite drapey!

(Yarn is Bella DK Tapestry, using a 6mm hook)

This might end up being a Christmas present, too… we’ll see!

I’ve talked about gauge before. I hope we all know now that even if you get gauge with one dye lot, you might not with the next. Different colours of yarn sometimes have different gauges, even if they are otherwise the same yarns… even in variegated and self-striping yarns (I’m looking at you, Bernat Baby Coordinates White)

The other day I made this:

It’s for my cousin; she likes handmade dishcloths and her kitchen colours are blue, green, and yellow.

I also made this for her:

(it’s actually more blue than grey in person… it’s supposed to look like denim)

And then this green-and-cream one:

I finished that last one on the commute home and it wasn’t until I stacked it on top of the other two that I noticed this:

All three dishcloths were made using Bernat Handicrafter Cotton, each with a 6mm hook, each exactly the same pattern.

Luckily, gauge doesn’t always matter. ^_^

(P.S. this post documents the first finished Christmas gifts for 2010. That’s right, you heard me!)