Wednesday, May 30, 2007

By Jove I think she's got it!

Huge shout of appreciation to Kathleen for leaving a link to some excellent crochet videos in my comments! Crochet definately seems less catered to on the interweb so if you have any funky links please please leave them in my comments.

The videos combined with this Craftster post made me sigh out loud. As Kathleen had suggested when I showed her my drunken 'v's, I was in fact crocheting slip stitches. Through no fault of my own I might add - the Happy Hooker book has a fatal flaw; the single crochet instructions are actually instructions for slip stitch.

So I have mastered slip stitch, and for those that wonder what happens if you crochet slip stitch: you get a sideways knitted fabric...



[above] You can literally see where the penny dropped. Thanks also to Ella at the Knit n' Stitch for keeping me right. Once I'd mastered the first basic stitch it was time to address those row ends and beginnings ...


Ta-da!!! 20 stitches of Single Crochet [Double Crochet UK], Half-Double Crochet [Half-Treble UK], Double Crochet [Treble UK], and Triple Crochet [Double Treble UK] - woohoo!


...and after that I began to run. A circle [bit of trouble with the row ends/beginnings though - Happy Hooker didn't mention whether to keep going round or to turn back]


The ultimate in crochet mastery; the Granny Square! I can't believe I made these! They are so funkylicious! Now I'm addicted to squares and will probably make enough for a blanket before to long. They are so quick and fab for using up spare bits of yarn. This is all cheapo acrylic for practicing.

I may need some help with sewing them together if anyone at the meet knows how to do this?

8 comments:

Kathleen said...

I'm not trying to be facetious but you can slip stitch your granny squares together!

I am so glad you got it, now that it's fallen into place you've been going great guns. Rectangles, circles, squares, there's no stopping you.

Dead happy it's worked out :-)

Anonymous said...

I agree with Kathleen - slip stitch 'em together. I'm happy to show you on Tuesday although I haven't crocheted in agggges - have been taken over by the knitty bug (I seem to have done it the other way round to you!)

Amanda said...

Congrats! I also got stuck with the Happy Hooker directions. Glad you got yourself sorted out!

Twelfthknit said...

http://wendyknits.net/patterns/kimono.htm

knitted kimono jacket pattern, don't know if you are strill looking.
India

Anonymous said...

The book isn't wrong. GB and US crochet terms are different.

Elaine said...

Cheers but it wasn't a UK/US terminology issue - For anyone else using Happy Hooker to learn there was a message from Debbie Stoller on the Craftster board:

"Turns out it's not your fault that you got confused, [...]. Unfortunately, when the publisher went back and thickened up all the arrows on the illos to make them clearer, like I asked them to, one of the illos got a bit messed up. The arrow on the illo at the top of page 31 shows that you pull the yarn through the stitch *and* the loop on the hook. It's wrong; just pull the yarn through the stitch (and not the loop on the hook) in step 2, so you wind up with two loops on your hook. I'll be posting a corrected illo to my site, www.knithappens.com, tonite, that you can print out and paste into your book. I'm so sorry about this particular error, it is a truly sucky one. grrrr"

Cheers Ksthleen & Sarah - I'll bring some squares to the meet cos it'll be great to be taught how to sew them together properly.

Elaine x

Twelfthknit said...

Hi Elaine - can you send me a note of your email again? Cheers,
India

Twelfthknit said...

http://mylittlemochi.typepad.com/my_little_mochi/


check out the 'polite' signs on today's posting.
India