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?

I am now officially a crochet instructor at Michaels, specifically, the Michaels at Dixie Mall, where I am also a sales floor associate.

My first class will be on Tuesday, March 6th, from 6:30 – 8:30 pm, called Discover Time For Crochet. In this inaugural class, we will be learning how to do Tunisian Crochet. This class is perfect for both absolute beginners (those who have never crocheted before) and for crocheters who are looking for a new technique to learn.

In this class we will be making this fingerless glove:

We’ll cover the Tunisian Simple Stitch and the Tunisian Purl Stitch. If we have time, we’ll touch on the Tunisian Knit Stitch and other interesting possibilities presented to us by this neat technique.

This class costs $25. If you sign up on March 3rd, you’ll get a 25% discount! For supplies, you’ll need one ball of Patons Astra yarn and a 5mm afghan hook. Depending on what coupons you have, these supplies will cost somewhere between $10 and $15. We’ll start the class with a trip to the yarn department, so if you’re not sure about exactly which supplies to buy, we can get them during the class.

For more information on my teaching activities, go to fantasticmio.com/teach or click on “Teach” at the top of the page.

(I forgot to take a picture before diving in to try it – you’ll see the missing hook and cord in the next picture ^_-)

Before I started, I consulted various videos and blogs on the subject, so I was going in with several different techniques in mind.

My goal: a stockinette swatch with a garter stitch border. This is how far I got:

It’s important to understand that even though you use a crochet hook, this is actually real knitting. It’s not an immitation like Tunisian knit stitch, or slip stitch crochet; it’s knitting. The cord holds the stitches (and acts like the left knitting needle), while you use the hook to work the stitches (which acts like the right knitting needle).

It seems like the entire point of knooking is that it makes it easier for crocheters to knit. It’s hard to say for sure with just this little swatch (so look for further blog posts about it!), but so far I’ve found that while it makes the knit stitch easier (and more familiar!) to a crocheter, it makes the purl stitch ridiculously harder than with needles.

I followed the instructions in the book (at least, I think I did…), and the purl stitches ended up twisted (which is why the first few rows of V’s look kind of wonky). So I followed the instructions I found in a video and that worked much better – by which I mean, the stitches looked right. It was a huge pain to do it that way, though. (And that last sentence is now nominated for the Understatement Of The Year award.)

The up side? If you are a crocheter and have always wanted a Doctor Who scarf, you can now easily make one using this technique. That scarf uses only knit stitches, and knit stitches, as I said above, are very, very easy with knooking.

One last thing: the knooks are crochet hooks with a hole in the end that you can feed a cord through. If you can’t find a knook, or can’t afford to buy more tools, you could easily use a long cabled tunisian hook with the stopper removed , or a locker hook instead.

ETA: I just tried a different way to knit and purl that made the purl stitch a lot easier and make the knit stitch a little harder. The real problem seems to be that the stitches I’m working into have a tendency to shrink on me. I’m not sure what would cause that – I’m still investigating.

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!

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:

I can hear you thinking – Big deal. It’s a granny square.

Look again!

Why?

Because this:

is a granny square.

That first picture is actually of an inside-out (outside-in?) attempt at a granny square.

Here they are side by side:

Crazy, isn’t it?

During this time, I found myself wondering if it would be possible to crochet with my feet. I was a bit bleary-brained at the time due to pain killers, and after a while I forgot about it.

Recently I was looking at my extensive WIP pile and thinking about all of the patterns I have yet to try, and getting frustrated trying to find places to keep all of my yarn, and the “crocheting with feet” idea came back to me.

Brilliant, isn’t it?

Think about it: you’d get twice as much done! Or, get things done in half the time! Or crochet while doing any number of things that require your hands – surf the web, read a book, eat dinner…

The only thing I had trouble with was inserting the hook. I think it’ll get easier with practice, though. If you try it, let me know how it goes!

I’m working on a new pattern (how exciting is that?)

Warm and toasty and cozy, I present to you:

Maybe a mitten!

So named because, like Hope’s Hat, you’ll be half-way through making this thing and thinking, “well, *maybe* it’ll end up being a mitten…”

I appologize for the fuzzy pictures, but I was just too excited about this pattern to wait for a winter sun beam!

The pattern isn’t quite right yet, but I think I’ve mostly figured it out. Stay tuned!

In other news, I’ve entered the Craftster “Advanced Accessories Challenge“, have you?

All is well now, so check out this scarf I made:

This is a Queen Anne’s Lace scarf using Bernat Mosaic yarn (Psychedelic colourway). I believe this pattern is available in many places; I found it as a free download on Ravelry (you need to be a member of Ravelry to get it, I think!)

It looks more complicated than it actually is. This pattern had a bit of a tricky bit, at least it seemed so to me! Whenever it says “work into the first (whatever)” it means to work into the one closest (to the left) of your hook. Clear as mud? ^_^

ETA: I posted this project on Craftster and it was declared one of the “Best of 2010″. Go me!

I’m a Craftster Best of 2010 Winner!