I have figured out a way to cross one Jacob’s Ladder under another one (that is already made) with minimal fuss:

First, ladder right up to (and including) the last rung before the cross-under:

Insert the hook under both the ladder and the first rung on the other side:

And pull it through the rung on your hook.

Next, hold on to the rung now on the hook with your hand, remove the hook, and insert it from top to bottom under the ladder and through the loop you’re holding, being careful not to twist it:

Use the hook to pull the rung under the crossing ladder:

Take the hook out and insert it in that same loop from the other side and continue laddering on your way.

Long story short: I have run out of places to store my yarn and something must be done.

I’ve decided to institute a yarn budget (shudder) that is directly related to using up stash yarn. In other words, I can increase the amount of money I am allowing myself to spend on yarn by using yarn I already own. Since the goal is to reduce the size of the stash, I’ve decided that each ball of stash yarn will be worth approximately 1/3 of what it would cost to replace it. (Which means that if I want to buy a ball of Bernat Satin, I’ll have to use three balls of Bernat Satin or equivalent first.)

Since this isn’t really about saving money, I’ve made up a “virtual jar” to track the money for the yarn budget. It’s on my phone so I’ll have it with me at all times.

Naturally, once I put this policy in place I started crocheting like a mad woman! And this is how I discovered the wonder that is Phentex Worsted yarn. It comes in a massive ball (400g / 792m, 14oz / 867y) and with a 40% off coupon at Michaels it’s only $6.

The good news is, one ball made 27 granny squares that measure about 6.5″:

The bad news is… I have two entire dollars in my yarn budget now.

sigh

If you are some kind of crazy person desperate and want to try this yourself, here is my conversion list:

Bernat Satin: $1
Phentex: $2
Vanna’s Choice: $1.25
LB Homespun: $1.50
L&T Charisma: $1.25
Bernat Waverly: $1.50
Bernat Handicrafter cotton: $0.50
Bernat Soft Boucle large: $2
Bernat Soft Boucle extra large: $3
RH Soft: $1.50

Charity yarn my mom buys: $0.25 (as an incentive to use it up as it costs me nothing to replace)
Yarn I won’t buy more of: $1
Scraps: 1 cent per gram rounded to the nearest quarter

I am deliberately ignoring sales tax. It just makes the numbers messy. Ignoring it in this list AND when buying yarn will balance out in the end. (And easily allows for purchasing yarn outside of Ontario!)

The reason I bring it up is because he inspired me to get organized in my designing endeavours. I’m still working out some of the kinks, but things have been going swimmingly! Of course, I’ve been crazy busy as a result.

And so, this post is an update on my design progress!

Currently, Hope’s Hat is in testing:

In the meantime, I’m working out sizing issues on some other projects… here’s a bit of a preview:

It’s all very exciting!

I have seen this stitch pattern used to look like scales, feathers, leaves, and cartoonish chainmaille. It all comes down to colour, really. You can alter the pattern a little bit to change the sharpness of the scales, too, which is kind of neat.

Here is a little bag that I whipped up:

I did a simple single crochet panel for the back:

If you’re going to make a bag using this stitch, I recommend lining it. As you can see here, the crocodile stitch side is actually quite hole-y:

I made this little bag up as a sample for an upcoming class I’ll be teaching. Look on my teaching page for details of when the next Crocodile Stitch class will be!

I finally bought some and started to experiment.

First, the intended use, single crochet:

(I also tried double crochet, it works, but it looks weird in the tiny swatch I made… I’m going to try it again on a larger scale, and try other stitches, at a later date.)

Then I tried an idea we had at guild: to crochet with a smooth yarn (in this case, Bernat Satin), and carry the Pom-Pom yarn along, crocheting over the thin parts and letting the puffs stick out (front and back) :

Then I tried using it to join and edge squares. This is by far my favourite use of this yarn so far!

Here’s how to crochet with this yarn:

Start by trimming four or five puffs. Be careful! It’s easy to accidentally cut through the main thread. It’s also beneficial to leave a bit of the puff, as shown – it helps keep the ends from un-weaving themselves.

Make a slip knot in the trimmed area you just made, close to the first puff.

Put your hook into the slip knot as usual. To make the base chain, you do as you normally would, you yarn over and pull through the loop on your hook. With this kind of yarn, it’s important to make sure you never pull a puff through the loop. Only work with the thin part, and pretty much ignore the puffs completely. So, to yarn over:

wrap the thin part of the yarn around the hook and ignore the closest puff.

Again, when you pull through, make sure you don’t bring a puff with you:

The base chain will naturally start to twist around. This will work itself out once you start working stitches into it.

Here we’re doing single crochet stitches, and so we need to insert the hook into the second chain from it:

And again, when you yarn over, ignore the puff closest to the hook and work with the thread after it, so that when you pull that loop up, you only have the thread and no puffs:

Skipping a puff, yarn over:

And pull just the thread through both loops.

When you’re done your piece, you need to trim some more puffs like you did at the beginning, then you pull this de-puffed thread through the loop to lock it all into place. Weave in the ends as you normally would – the smaller puffs seem to be just big enough to encourage the ends to stay where they are.

That’s all there is to it! Doing other stitches seems to just be the case where you continue to ignore the puffs. When I tried it with double crochet, all of the puffs in a row pointed in one direction, and so the puffs on the next row pointed the other way. Again, I’ll play with it and report back!

Or just click here: Tutorials

What I need from you now is: what tutorials haven’t I done yet that you’d like to see? Please leave your answers as a reply below!

In the mean time… I still can’t stop making spiral hex blankets:

Both are made using Loops & Threads Necessities and working until each ball ran out (the variegated yarn runs out before the solid does). The blankets measure between 33″ and 40″ depending on how you measure.

For the best results when doing Tunisian crochet, you need a special hook called an “afghan hook”. You can also use a double ended hook (and ignore one of the ends), or a cabled hook. The important thing is that the hook be the same size and shape after the head – so, no thumb rest, and no fancy handles. It’s also important, if you’re making something large, to have some kind of stopper on the end to keep the loops from sliding off. Afghan hooks and most cabled hooks come with a stopper. When I use a double ended hook for this I usually wrap an elastic band around the unused head.

Also, you need to use a bigger hook than you normally would for the yarn you’re using. I suggest going up two sizes. For this yarn, I normally use a 5mm hook. When using it for Tunisian crochet, I use a 6mm hook. You’ll want to experiment – using an even larger hook can take care of curling problems, but can also result in a lacier fabric.

Let’s get started!

As with a lot of crochet techniques, start with a base chain:

Insert the hook in the second chain from the hook (I like to go into the back bump – it makes the bottom of the piece look nicer)

Yarn over:

Pull through and add that loop to your hook:

Insert the hook into the next chain, yarn over, and add that loop to your hook. Keep going until you have done this with every stitch:

Note: I started with 10 chains, and I now have 10 loops on my hook – the number of loops matches the number of chains.

Now it’s time to work the loops off of the hook. Start by yarning over:

And pull through one loop:

Yarn over

And pull through two loops:

Repeat: *yarn over, pull through two loops* until there is only one loop left on the hook

The first row is done! This is always how the first row is done in Tunisian crochet. What forms this row into the desired stitch is how you work into it on the next row.

The Tunisian Simple stitch is usually the first one you learn. There’s a reason why it’s called that… it’s certainly the easiest one to describe!

To do the second rows (and all subsequent rows), you start by inserting the hook, from right to left, behind the second vertical bar:

Yarn over:

and pull that loop onto the hook:

Repeat this process by inserting the hook behind the next vertical bar, and pulling that loop onto the hook until you have only one vertical bar left, the one at the very end. You *can* insert the hook the same way you have been so far, but for a nicer left side edge, you can insert the hook in a special way for the last stitch:

It’s a bit tricky to see in that picture, but where you insert the hook is immediately to the right of the end vertical bar, and to the left of a little vertical section nearest the hook in the picture. You insert the hook from front to back through the fabric, leaving two vertical bars on one side of the hook:

and lift that loop onto the hook.

Any way you slice it, when you’re done, you’ll have the same number of loops on your hook as stitches you started with:

And then work them off as you did before: yarn over and pull through one loop, then *yarn over, pull through two loops* over and over until you only have one loop left on the hook.

Continue adding rows in this manner until you are satisfied with the length of the project. It should look something like this:

You may notice that the last row you make seems a bit lacy, or hole-y. This is normal. When you finish a Tunisian piece, you need to slip stitch across the top to close this up.

It is important to note that because, as mentioned earlier, the row above a row is what gives it its definition, that when you slip stitch to end a piece, you need to insert the hook in the manner of the stitch you are creating. In this example we are doing the Tunisian Simple stitch, and so we will always insert the hook from right to left behind the vertical bars. If you were doing the Tunisian Knit stitch, you would insert the hook through the fabric (as described in the Tunisian Knit stitch tutorial) when doing the slip stitch.

In pictures:
Insert the hook behind the next vertical bar and yarn over:

Pull through (including through the loop on the hook) :

Repeat for each stitch: insert the hook, yarn over, pull through both loops (slip stitch) until you reach the end.

Cut the yarn and pull it through the last loop, and you’re done!

As you can see, this swatch is curling a bit. This is normal. The Tunisian Simple stitch is slightly bigger on the back than it is on the front – it’s not as big a difference as with the Tunisian Knit stitch, though.

Enter the gauge:

Now, this is a knitting needle gauge. It’s designed so that you insert the knitting needle into the holes to see while one is the best fit. This doesn’t work so well for some crochet hooks:

Here, the problem is that the head of the hook is bigger than the shaft (which is the part we’re tring to measure). There is such a thing as a crochet hook gauge, but I can’t seem to find one to buy. A hook gauge typically has a tear-drop shaped hole in it, where you put the hook into the hole and then slide it towards the small end until it fits snugly. You then look at the measurement marking next to that spot in the hole.

This seems to me like it could be somewhat inaccurate. Also, you’re limited to hook sizes that fit in the hole – it may not work for extra large or extra small hooks.

Now, my workaround for this has been to simply insert the butt end of the hook into the gauge, like so:

But that doesn’t always work. For example, steel hooks (for thread), all have the same size handle:

Double ended hooks don’t have a handle:

And there are hooks out there that are designed to be more ergonomic (I don’t have any), that definitely wouldn’t work with this needle gauge.

The solution?

A caliper!

Simply clamp it around the shaft of the hook like so:

Ta da!

You do left side short row shaping on the “picking up loops” part of a row. Simply pick up loops, but stop short of reaching the end, like so:

Work the loops off as usual.

When you’re ready to do a regular row again, you simply lift up a loop in every stitch of the previous row AND in every previously missed stitch:

Then work the loops off as usual.

Right side short row shaping happens on the “working loops off of the hook” part of the row.

Start by lifting a loop up in every stitch:

When working the loops off of the hook, stop before you reach the end. Here, I’ve got two more stitches to go (the loop closest to the head of the hook is the working loop and doesn’t count as a stitch)

You start the next row by lifting a loop up in the second vertical bar from the hook and in each subsequent stitch.

When you’re done doing your short row shaping, you work all of the loops off as normal:

Here is a swatch that I hope makes it easier to see what is going on.

I started with 15 stitches. Each short row misses 3 stitches, and this pattern continues until there are only 3 stitches left. Shaping on the left side:

Now shaping on the right side:

The whole swatch:

This stitch makes a thick fabric which I have found excellent for mittens.

Start out the same way you would with any Tunisian crochet – make a base chain, lift up loops in each stitch, and then work them off, or use the Crochet Cast-On (in re-writing this tutorial is occurs to me that I haven’t made one for the basics of Tunisian crochet. I’ll make one once I’ve re-written the missing posts!)

Time to insert the hook! With Tunisian Simple stitch you work with the vertical bars, but those vertical bars are just the loops that were lifted onto the hook on the last row. For the Tunisian Knit stitch, you still insert the hook from right to left into that loop…

But you also push the hook through the fabric – it should come out the back to the left (as seen from above) of the vertical bar at the back:

Yarn over:

And pull a loop up onto the hook:

You’ll notice as you work that your project is curling severely:

This is normal for the Tunisian Knit stitch. It is bigger on the back than it is on the front, and so it curls. You can minimise the curl a little bit by going up to an even bigger hook size than you normally would go up to with Tunisian crochet. Blocking might help if you’re using a natural fibre; or you could try adding a border.

In this picture, I’m hoping you can see why this is called a “knit” stitch: