Posts Tagged ‘Bernat Satin’

Joining Ridge

I mentioned back around Christmas that I was tired of joining my motifs with the whip-stitch. So, I decided, in the spirit of NatCroMo, to give the sc join a second chance.

Some folks really like this join, and I’d always secretly thought that they’d talked themselves into liking it because it was faster and more fun than whip-stitching. I have to admit, it’s starting to grow on me!

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It’s not hard to do, as I mentioned, you just hold the two motifs together and do sc stitches into a stitch on each of them, at the same time. Hold them right-side out if you want the ridge on the front, and right sides together if you want it on the back.

Curiouser and curiouser

I got all of my hexagons finished:

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They each measure about 5″ from side to side. I’m thinking of joining them with sc stitches… I’ve never really liked the look of that joining method, but I’m going to give it another try, as whip-stitching them all together isn’t my idea of fun.

It’s NatCroMo; I’m supposed to have fun!

Minus Two

Hey look, a hexagon!
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Here’s the (lazy) pattern:

R1: *dc, ch1* 6 times
R2: *3dc in ch1 sp, ch1* 6 times
R3: *3dc, ch1, 3dc all in ch1 sp* 6 times
R4: 1dc in each previous dc, *dc, ch1, dc* in ch1 sp (8 dc per side)
R5: same as R4 (10 dc per side)

I’ve made a few of them:
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What could I possibly be up to? ^_-

Yukon Octagon

Why Yukon? Mostly because it rhymes. Also, one of these is yellow. This one, in fact:
yellow-octagon
And that reminds me of Yukon Gold (which is a potato… yeah, I’m not sure where I’m going with this either…)

I made this for a motif swap I was in. It was a scavenger-hunt-style swap, and one of the motifs we were to “look for” was one we designed ourselves, and this was mine!

Here it is again in white:
blue-octagon
(Um… it snows in the Yukon Territory! Snow is white! Yes, it’s all coming together now…)

Now, I’ve written this pattern in my usual, lazy style. There is no mention of how to start it, so start it however you like to start a motif made in the round. Use a Magic Ring, or just work into the first chain you made, or whatever floats your boat. I also haven’t described any turning chains. Every round is made up of dc stitches, so use something appropriate. I used no-turning-chain-dc stitches, but you could also use a ch2 or ch3. Whatever you use, treat it like a regular dc stitch for the sake of the pattern.

Oh, and don’t forget to join each round. No spirals here!

Octagon Motif:
rnd1: *dc, ch1* 8 times
rnd2: *2dc in ch1 space, ch1* 8 times
rnd3: *2dc, ch1, 2dc in ch1 space* 8 times
rnd4: *3dc, ch1, 3dc in ch1 space, dc in other space* 8 times

Dave Capisano

Attention new crocheters, there’s something you should know!

Designers sometimes make up their own names for stitch patterns.

The good news is that this means that designers will usually define their special stitches right there in the pattern, so they could call it a Shazbut Special, and it wouldn’t matter because they tell you what it is.

The bad news is that finding more help on these stitch patterns isn’t easy. That pattern the designer called the Shazbut Special might be called Busker’s Delight by the person who posted the tutorial video to youtube.

I bring this up because I recently came across a pattern that called for the moss stitch. Before this point in my life, I was only aware of the moss stitch as refered to by knitters. Luckily, there was a link to a youtube tutorial.

I made up a swatch:
DSC03863
We’ll call this one “Moss Stitch HalfDouble-SlipStitch” because it’s made up of a pattern of *hdc, slst* repeated, with each subsequent row made up of doing an hdc into a slst, and a slst into an hdc.

Those instructions might sound a little bit familiar to some of you, as they are eerily similar to this:
DSC03865
which we’ll call “Moss Stitch Double-Single”, and some of you might recognise as the stitch pattern I use in my Diet Coke Bottle Cozies. Basically, it is a row of *dc, sc* repeated, and in subsequent rows you work a dc into a sc, and a sc into a dc. I didn’t know it was called “moss stitch” when I chose it for my cozies… I just thought it looked neat. Not too stretchy, not too tight.

Finally, there is a third stitch pattern that is referred to as “moss stitch”:
DSC03862
and we’ll call it “Moss Stitch Single-Chain1″ for it is made by repeating *sc, ch1* a bunch of times (and ending with a sc), and in subsequent rows you work your sc into the ch1 space.

I’d say this one has the nicest drape of the three moss stitches, and it didn’t curl up in the corners like the others. I do believe I’m going to make a blanket using this stitch. We’ll see!

Extra bonus today:

I tried out the stitch height experiment with two colours.
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It’s a bit wonky, but I think that would go away with a larger example. What do you think?

Second Shortest

In the spirit of NatCroMo, I’ve been experimenting.

Here we have some fun with stitch height:

DSC03848

Pattern: ch10(ish), tc, htc, dc, hdc, sc, turn, ch5, tc, htc, dc, hdc, sc.

After making this, I thought I’d try it with more stitches. Basically the same pattern as above, but 2 of every stitch:
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(The extra fuzz is from frogging a few times. Experimenting is like that!)

And the same again, but with 4 of each:
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I’m not sure if you can tell from the pics, but they didn’t come out as perfectly rectangular as I’d pictured them in my head. I’m going to have to tinker with this a bit before doing it on a larger scale.

Celebrate NatCroMo by learning something new, or just pick up your hook and yarn and start stitching. You may be surprised at what you end up with!

NatCroMo 2010

Happy National Crochet Month!

I have no idea where it comes from, but this is at least the third year it has been celebrated.

The Crochet Guild of America is doing a Crochet-along. Ravelry is having a party. Craftster is getting in on the fun, too! And you can follow the excitement on Twitter by searching for #natcromo.

As for me, I’m going to try and crochet even more than usual this month (though, I’m not sure how I’m going to do that yet…)

This morning on my commute to work I started making another Diet Coke Bottle Cozy, mostly just to see what the pattern would look like with striped yarn. I finished it at lunch, and here it is!
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In other news, I finished the Ladybug blanket!
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A close up of the face:
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I ended up crocheting a separate black wedge and sewing it on for the face, as the colour changes on the big circle really weren’t working for me. Sewing the spots on was quite annoying as well… I’m going to have to find a better way to do that. Not that I plan on making this blanket again, but I’m sure this sort of technique will come up in something else.

So, back to NatCroMo: Learn to crochet! Crochet something new! Learn a new crochet technique! Crochet in public! Talk about crochet! Sing about crochet! But above all… CROCHET! ^_^

Hat How-to

Today I attempted to teach my crochet guild how to make a Crochet-on-the-Double hat (or this Crochet-on-the-Double hat).

I’ve made a follow-up tutorial, and was going to make it a post, but there are so very many pictures that I decided it needed it’s own page. So, click here, or scroll right to the top of this page and click on “hat”. Again, there are a LOT of pictures, so it might take some time to load.

Here’s a sample pic:
DSC03774

Please, please, please give me any feedback you can if you try out this tutorial. It was somewhat complicated to put together and my eyes are too blurry now to see if I missed something or messed up. I haven’t figured out how to do comments on the special pages, so feel free to comment here if you see any problems, or comment on any post here, or send me an e-mail if you have the address. Thank you so much!

And the lake is damp

I know this won’t come as a surprise to everyone reading this blog, but Bell sucks. I’ve had the misfortune of being a telephone customer of theirs, as well as a customer of Bell Sympatico. For anyone who pays attention to this sort of thing, my opinion is: don’t use Bell unless under threat of death.

Why? In short:

- they have stolen money out of my bank account (by doing something they *specifically* claimed was impossible) then wouldn’t give it back until I involved my bank

- they’ve cut off my phone service for not paying *someone else’s* bill, and even after it was proven that was the case they still wouldn’t reconnect it, and still wouldn’t even after we proved that it was, in fact, their fault that it was possible at all

- they’ve sold me a service that didn’t exist (which lead to me having to pay the cable company an extra hookup charge since they had to come to my house twice)

- and most recently they failed to fix a connection problem. For two weeks. They claim to have made 6 appointments for techs to check out the problem, but we only saw 2. Each of those techs “fixed” the problem, only to have service go back down within 24 hours. (They also both complained bitterly about working for Bell!)

So, what’s a gal to do during this internet outage? (Did I mention that the internet wasn’t working at work either because of a computer virus? *yanks out hair*) Well, I certainly didn’t plan any part of my wedding! (Whose idea was it to keep our notes about it in a Google document? Oh wait, that was me…)

I crocheted, naturally! I also loom-knit.

You all remember Mom’s sorority’s charity thing with the kids hats and scarves right?

Check it!
DSC03737

The plan is to fill a bin with these. The current count is 23 complete sets (I took this picture before finishing a few of them… all of those hats in front of the pile have matching scarves now, plus there is another set not pictured… and a blue hat I still need to make a matching scarf for…)

I also made quite a few dishcloths. And a crochet-on-the-double hat using Bernat Soft Boucle (that still needs sewing up), and blew through a few more balls of red on the Ladybug blanket. I’m woefully behind on motifs, but expect to see a rush of those soon, as I’m in another motif swap. ^_^

A possible conclusion from all of this might be that having no internet access can be really good for my crafting! Another conclusion might be that having no internet had the potential to drive me so crazy that I needed that many projects to distract myself with just to get through it…

*eye twitch*

Counting on not counting

My mom wants to give that Ladybug blanket as a gift in March, so I thought maybe I should finish making it, or something. So, I brought it with me to my last Crochet Guild meeting, figuring that I’d get a good chunk of it done.

Unfortunately, my original plan for making this circle pattern was to count to the number of rounds I’m on, 12 times, to make sure I get evenly spaced increases that aren’t all stacked on one another (and thereby making a dodecagon and not a circle). As it turns out, it’s difficult to count while chit-chatting. I ended up putting the blanket aside and working on other things (of *course* I brought other yarn. Whose blog do you think you’re reading here?).

Obviously this is the sort of project that needs attention: no chit-chatting, no subway, no work, no television. As it turns out, I don’t have enough time like that in my schedule between now and March. What to do?

Well, I came up with a solution, but only because of a totally unrelated conversation on Ravelry recently. We were talking about the chainless foundation, and whether or not it could be used in projects that don’t start with a plain, all-one-kind-of-stitch first row (turns out it can… more on that later). Anyhow, someone was having trouble seeing where to insert the hook to make the next stitch, and someone else suggested she put a stitch marker in the chain stitch so that she could find it more easily.

Huh.

You know, I *never* think of using stitch markers. I’ve ignored them in every pattern I’ve made that called for them, mostly because I haven’t needed them. I know what various stitches look like, I can see very clearly when they change into other stitches, and so often the stitch markers are there so that you don’t have to count three or four stitches every time. To me, it’s not worth the annoyance of using stitch markers, just to save a second or two.

But, because of that recent conversation, I did think of it this time. And look!

DSC03731

That’s 12 evenly spaced scraps of yarn. I am now crocheting and watching TV with abandon!

(P.S. I’ll be teaching my Crochet Guild how to make Crochet-on-the-Double hats at the next meeting, on Feb. 20th. If you decide to come check it out, bring a 6mm, double-ended hook, and some worsted weight yarn in two colours with you. I recommend a ball of each colour you want in Bernat Satin, but use what you want. There will be some hooks at the meeting, available to buy, but I don’t know how many they’ll have.)