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.

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 first learned of this pattern from a Crochet-Along on Craftster. It’s such a pretty pattern, and it suits this yarn really well (I bought the yarn at Mary Maxim during their Boxing Week sale with only a vague idea of what I’d do with it… a blanket… that’s all I had planned).

Anyhow, it’s a good thing it’s pretty, because the number of ends to weave in is astounding.

Here’s a wider shot (no, you can’t see the ends… I’ve been diligently weaving them in as I go) :

I’m actually further along on this than the in that picture. I’ve just about used up the first ball of each colour now.

As for the ends… the pattern goes: 2 rows brown, 1 row green, 1 row pink, repeat. The open-spaced nature of the pattern means that there isn’t really a neat way to crochet over the ends as you go, and so… there are 6 ends to weave in. For every pattern repeat.

I’m taking a bit of a break from this one for a little while; I don’t think you’ll blame me!

Well, I’ve done one better… I found the actualy blanket itself! As I was laying it out I took note of various lessons we can learn from it.

1. Don’t ch3 between EVERY cluster of 3 dc stitches, unless you want a really holey and ruffly shawl of some sort.

2. Don’t use yarn you’re allergic to. (I’m itchy just from laying it out on the bed to take the pic!)

3. Some kind of border wouldn’t kill you.

Like I said, I made this “blanket” back when I first learned how to crochet. It brought back some fun memories, too.

For example, my vision for this blanket was simple. “I like rainbows!” and “rainbows are seen in the sky!”. I had odds and ends of this yarn – enough to make the rainbow part – but I didn’t have any blue. So, Mom and I headed out to Michaels.

Michaels was having a sale! If memory serves, this yarn was on for 50 cents a ball. We bought a few balls. Enough to make this blanket shawl, anyway!

So, when I finished this thing (?), obviously I had a TON of the light blue yarn left over.

My next Big Plan was a ripple blanket for my brother and his at-the-time-girlfriend. I asked my brother what his favourite colour was which, apparently, is the wrong question to ask a Monte Python fan. Since I had all of this sky-blue yarn, I decided to make them a blue blanket. Makes sense, no?

The plan was to gradually shift from navy blue, through blue, to a medium blue, to the sky blue. It was to be glorious!

I was new to crochet, and so decided to aim my sights low. I’d make a twin-sized blanket.

Off I went to buy a small handful of the other three colours of blue yarn, and I started with the navy blue. Did a bunch of rows. A row of blue, then a bunch more of navy. Then a couple of blue, and a few less of the navy. And on it went.

Of course, the blanket wasn’t just growing in length, it somehow managed to expand sideways into a blanke that was too big for my double bed. I also managed to mis-judge how many rows I’d need, and managed to not use ANY of the sky blue yarn that was the inspiration for the blanket in the first place.

Also, it wasn’t until I was almost finished the blanket that I discovered that I was really allergic to the yarn I was using. (Geez, why do my hands keep turning bright pink when I work on this thing? Scratch scratch scratch scratch….)

Oh, and it took me 3 years to finish the damned thing. In that time my brother and his girlfriend had gotten married. It was a while ago, but I think I ended up giving them this blanket for their first anniversary.

I did luck out in one department, though: their main wedding colour was blue. Success!

The hexagon scrap baby blanket is coming along nicely:

And that green basket weave blanket is now at 8.5″. Exciting stuff!

It’s working out marvelously! (The colours are a bit off in that picture… it’s been quite dreary in Toronto lately). I basically just did the first three rounds of the hexagon, and on the last round, did the joining method. I absolutely love the results… it’ll be hard parting with this blanket when it’s finished.

On the up side, I have a feeling I know where my Bernat Satin odds and ends are going to end up. ^_-

I like projects I can take with me places, mostly to work. The baby blankets I’ve been making have been difficult to bring along in my bag because I was always using two strands at a time, which meant carrying two large balls of yarn for each colour. As the blanket grows, it gets harder to take it places.

So, I went on a search to find a good, brainless pattern to use with this yarn, one-stranded, that wouldn’t be too boring.

Success!

Introducing the crocheted basket weave!

This stitch pattern is created by doing alternating groups of front post double crochet (fpdc) and back post double crochet (fpdc).

To do these stitches, you work a dc as you normally would, but instead of inserting your hook through the top of the previous row stitch, you work the stitch around the post of the stitch below. For fpdc you insert the hook from front to back on the right side of the post, and poke it out on the left side of the stitch and grab the yarn there. For bpdc, you insert from back to front on the right side of the post, then back out on the left side. I’ll do a picture tutorial of it some day. ^_^

I like the texture this pattern gives:

I started with a chainless foundation of dc stitches. A multiple of 3 plus 2. The first and last stitches of each row after that are just regular dc stitches. The stitches in between go *3 fpdc, 3 bpdc* repeat as needed. Now, when you turn at the end of your row, the fpdc stitches will now look like bpdc, and vice versa. Work the stitch opposite to what it looks like you did before.

I think what I like most about this stitch pattern is that it’s the same on both sides:

The blanket is about 6″ long right now, so I still have a ways to go, but it should fit in my work bag quite nicely until it’s nearly finished. And that’s fantastic. ^_^