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!