Hippy-Trippy

I am still working on my crochet project. At first I was afraid it would look too hippy-dippy.  However the stores are full of badly made similar cardigans, so I now figure I'm good. Not sure how long to make it. The pattern is knee length. I don't want to go that long. Nor do I think I have the yardage for that. I think just below my fat butt may be a good length.  Please excuse the odd angle for the progress picture, but here is how far I have gotten:




I am hoping to get this done so I can wear it to the Knitter's Fair in Waterloo this September....

ciao!

Must Learn

Lately I keep seeing crochet projects that are lovely. My crochet skills are rudimentary. My crochet pattern reading skills are practically nonexistent. So in typical fashion I decided I wanted to make a little cardigan type thing to wear. In crochet. The first pattern I perused had a lot of comments on Ravelry that were along the lines of "pattern badly written, I had to wing it with what I thought should happen". NOT a good idea for a neophyte hooker.

The second pattern I attempted was a little too advanced, it had stitches I had never heard of and that weren't in my Happy Hooker book.

The third one appears to be working. I am learning crochet-speak. AND the pattern is turning out the way I think it is supposed to. WIN. One of the main stumbling blocks was realizing that in crochet, you often do more than one stitch into a space or chain. In knitting it is 1 stitch per space, more often than not. (excepting lace, of course).So when the crochet pattern tells you 'slip stitch double crochet into next chain' it does not mean into 2 different chains. It means into the SAME chain. Which I figured out when I ran out of chain.  Fortunately, frogging crochet is not nearly as heart-stopping as frogging knitting since there is only 1 live stitch to keep track of.

It is the Lacy Duster. Although I probably won't make it quite as long as the picture.

It is worked from the neck down. As you can see, my piece so far actually looks like a neck and yoke to a cardigan! HOORAY!

Shellspawn Blanket

A friend is having a baby (spawning) and I made a play on the parents' name for the title of this post/project name.

The pattern is Opart and the yarn is various acrylics I had in my stash. Canadiana was one. This is a garter stitch blanket knit in the round. I started it on dpn's after the first attempt at using 2 circs created giant holes in the fabric at the changeovers. Once it was bigger I switched to one circ. Given that the yarn I was using was worsted weight, I also went up a needle size, so I used an US8. Even with the change, there were rather substantial holes at the colour changeovers.

After weaving in the ends, the holes all went away, though. But I was a bit concerned, I can tell you!
The final blankie:



I am quite pleased with it. The only thing I didn't take into consideration is that the pattern calls for blocking into a square shape. Obviously, with acrylic, the blocking does not 'take' really well. But hey, the blankie is square-ish, and the visual swirly effect should make up for that, right? (and I REALLY did not want to saddle a new mom, who doesn't knit and thus is not familiar with the arcana of knitted projects and blocking with a blanket with a lot of special care instructions)

Overall I am quite pleased with the effect.