Saturday, May 5, 2007

Leaving the crochet 'mostly' up to you!




Crochet is something I generally feel is best left to anyone but me. While my mother can crochet afghans for the grandkids, I prefer to knit. Why? Cuz I can knit. I can knit without looking...and I don't generally have to keep referring to the directions every 3.5 seconds while I am knitting.

For me, crocheting is something I have to do without any distractions. I have to watch every movement and twist of the yarn. I have to constantly count and double check to make sure I'm putting the hook into the correct loop. Therefore, I can't watch tv, or a movie, or the kids when they used to play soccer, or baseball, or dance competitions while I'm crocheting.


Except for this one pattern. I've made a 'bucket load' of these afghans in both the written size and my adaptation for babies. It's called the Crayon Ripple Throw/Blanket and it can be found on the Lion Brand web site. www.lionbrand.com. For me, since the original pattern was written for Jamie-4 ply (which has now been discontinued) the easiest way to find the pattern is to put the title in their search bar. Keep in mind that their patterns are all free, but you do have to register to use their patterns.



For the full sized patterns I use any brand of worsted weight yarn as per the pattern with a size J-10 crochet hook. For the baby sized afghans, I drop it down to an H size crochet hook. I then repeat rows 2 and 3 each for a total of 28 times. This gives me roughly a 36" square baby afghan. I've made many for the NMCRS baby layette program. Just pick how many colors you want and chaneg the colors every 2 or even amount of rows.


As to the rest of the crocheting - well, come to think about it, it's been forever since I've made broomstitch lace afghans, too..maybe I'll have to do one at some point. otherwise...as far as the rest of the crochet world...I'll leave up to you!