Learn to Crochet: Half-Double Crochet Stitch

The half-double crochet stitch involves, well, half the number of times you pull your yarn through your loops the way you would if you were making a double crochet stitch.  I can never quite shake the feeling that I'm doing something a little incorrectly when I have three loops on my crochet hook and then I yarnover and pull the yarn through all of them at once. But I'm not doing anything wrong because that's the completely correct way to do things when your pattern calls for the half double crochet stitch.  Here, this nice lady will show you:

And that's how it's done!

See these little swatches?

This is what 5 rows of double crochet, 5 rows of halfdouble crochet, and 5 rows of single crochet look like!  A double crochet stitch is twice the height of a single crochet stitch, and the half double crochet stitch (abbreviated to 'hdc' in patterns) is somewhere in between them.  Not too big, and not too little.  It's juuuuust right.

The half double crochet stitch is used in crochet patterns.  I realize that's a pretty banal statement, but the half double crochet isn't especially tricky or mysterious or weird.  If there are crocheted items to be made, there will be patterns for those items and a whole heckuva lot of them will call for half double crochet stitches.  It's not quite as common as a single crochet stitch or a double crochet stitch, but it is one of the most common crochet stitches.  It's a good one to know.

And now you do!  Watch the video a few times and try it out for yourself.  You're well on your way to being a crocheter.  Happy hooking!

Knitting the Basic Beanie for a Summery Slouch Hat

 

I'm a bit of a mess on the weekends.  We'll pretend like it's in a stylish and cute way.  If I don't have anywhere to be (and sometimes even if I do), I'm not going to get too very fixed up.  But I still like to look like I tried at least a little, which means I like to throw on a long dress and a hat.  Hats cover a multitude of hair sins, and I like to knit them.

So last week I cast on the Simple Beanie from Knit Slouchy Beanies and Headwraps so I could have some nice TV knitting.  I was still a little irritated after my crocheted Simple Beanie disappointment, so I wanted a project I knew would work out okay.  I'd knitted it once before and so I knew that if I used needles a size below what the pattern called for, I could use some cotton yarn that was roughly the same weight as the wool yarn I'd used last time.

I actually have quite a stash of some cotton yarn that a knitter friend gave me after we talked about a sweater I'd made for my daughter out of cotton yarn, and she had decided it hurt her hands too much to work with regularly.  I've had it since the fall, and now that warm weather is (finally!!!) here, I wanted a lightweight hat to wear on sweaty, messy weekends.  The yarn seems a little bit finer than your standard dishcloth cotton, and knitted up fine.  I kind of wish I knew what brand it was.  But I have quite a bit to work through before I worry about it.  So.

Anyway, I cast on the hat on a Friday and knitted up the band and about an inch of the hat after joining in the round.  The next day, I threw it in my purse in case I 'needed' it to keep myself occupied while I waited in line for some errands.

I love the band on this.  You even get to make a loop and sew on a button!  This is a great pattern for people with more interesting buttons than mine!  I love when people get creative with buttons.

Then I carefully packed a lovely project bag with everything I'd need for a completely different project and I probably don't have to tell you which one I worked on at my knitting group that night, do I?

Dear reader, I not only knit on that hat I finished it that night. 

(Drops circular knitting needles and walks off stage LIKE A BOSS.)

Ahem.  Okay, it was admittedly a very heavy knitting day, and I did stay up a little later than normal.  But even with the cotton yarn, which tends to slow me down a bit, this was a fast knit.  It's about as close to instant gratification as a knitter can get without picking up some super bulky yarn and PVC tubes.  I didn't make any modifications to the pattern other than maybe knitting a little longer than called for before starting the decrease rounds.  But that just gives me extra slouch.

The Basic Beanie calls for knitting garter stitch as you work the band flat, and then increasing and switching knitting in the round.  The pattern just tells you to "increase stitches evenly" and I found a handy website that helps you calculate how to do that.  After that, all you do is knit row upon row while chatting with friends or intensely watching television on DVD until it's time to decrease.

I really like this hat (in case you couldn't tell from the picture of me happily wearing it), and I know I'm going to be getting quite a bit of use out of it this summer.  I love it.  Love, love, love it!

Crocheting the Crisscross Dishcloth

Remember that time I figured out the crochet cross stitch was no big deal?  Or at least an attractive but not overly complicated deal?  That was awesome.

I decided to completely embrace the awesome by crocheting the Crisscross Dishcloth from Dishcloths.

This time it didn't kick my tail!  Hooray!

I'm still on a bit of a dishcloth kick, but I think I need a bit of a break from the Fast Favorite.  It's probably still my favorite, but the Crisscross Dishcloth is a great project, too.  It's one color, and it's already a dishcloth--meaning it's a great portable project. And I like the way it looks.

Even if you allow for unraveling and restarting a few rows (because I did), this project still took just 2 or 3 hours on a Saturday.  If I'd been more familiar with the pattern, or slightly less engrossed with the show I was watching, it probably would have taken me a little less time than that.

I wound up leaving off the final row because the dishcloth was already starting to get a little too large for my liking, and one border row seemed like enough.  The finished project is supposed to measure approximately 10" across, and I think my dishcloth was a little bit larger than that.  So I got a good-sized dishcloth for just 9 rows of crocheting!  Score!

The pattern alternates double crochet stitches and crochet cross stitch sets, and the result is some nicely textured and incredibly dense crocheted fabric.  As in, you will definitely be able to scrub some dishes with this pretty dishcloth.  It's a really sturdy dishcloth that should last a long time.

However, to be so dense, the Crisscross dishcloth only took about 2/3 of a skein of Sugarn' Cream cotton yarn.  It's an excellent use of 90 yards or so!

 

The Crisscross dishcloth is a great way to practice the cross stitch crochet stitch, a nice-looking pattern, and it's sure to be a nice gift!  Maybe it is my new favorite....

Making a Patriotic Tutu

I don't know why I feel the need to preface today's post with a disclaimer, but I do:

I am not a tutu mom.

I'm just not.  I pick out baby clothes that are not especially ruffly, I have weird rules about animal prints for my daughter, and when my little girl was an infant she never had one of those headbands with the enormous flower on top.  I like simple onesies and thrift store shorts and organic cotton unisex t-shirts.

But it turns out I have a tutu daughter.

I don't know if I should blame the aunts and grandparents for buying her pinkpinkpink merchandise, if I should rail against the insidious marketing monsters who have convinced my child that we have to read princess books every day, or if I should shrug my shoulders and accept that my sister's genetic predisposition to loving purses, shoes, and statement jewelry pieces have been passed on to my kid.  For the last couple of months, I've been choosing the last option.

Whatever the cause, the girl's just fancy.

Fancy little girls need crowns and bright pink clothes and princess figurines that are stored in glittery purses.  And tutus.

So when I saw the book A Tutu for Every Occasion, I said a silent prayer of thanks that we made it 2 whole years without a tutu in the house and checked the shopping list for the Patriotic Tutu in time for Memorial Day next week.  I decided to skip the Patriotic Headband because my little creature has mixed feelings about headbands, and I also decided that rhinestones on the felt stars might still pose too much of a choking threat at this stage in the game. 

Other than that, I made the tutu following the directions exactly.  I don't know if my sweet girl will wear this on Memorial Day or if she's going to wear it every day forever.  It's looking like it might be the latter.  But I liked the themes in A Tutu For Every Occasion, and I appreciated the clear instructions.

It's pretty great for $20 of supplies and 30 minutes of work!

And I must say, she looks so darn cute in her patriotic tutu.  She was absolutely delighted to see it when she woke up from her nap and immediately had to wear it all night.  She was more than willing to put it on again for a few more pictures the next day.

If I could offer any advice about this quick little project, it would be to buy tulle.  Just tulle.  Not glitter tulle as the instructions call for.  Because glitter tulle sheds more glitter than I could have ever thought to dread.  And every time the tulle moves, glitter falls like a gentle snow.

I put the tutu on a two-year-old, though, and the glitter blizzard has not been kind to our carpet. Still, our lovely little American enjoys her new 'skirt' and I had fun making it.  I think she'll get a lot of wear out of it this summer.

It's almost enough to make me think about making the Princess Ensemble.....

Learn to Crochet: Blackberry Stitch

It's no secret that I'm not a particularly masterful crocheter.  Obviously.  But I find it interesting and I like to learn more about it all the time.  I'm not sure why, but I don't mind professing my ignorance in this field.  It really bothers me when I don't understand a knitting technique, or if I'm unfamiliar with a stitch.  Knitting is my main method of yarncrafting, so I guess I feel like I "should" know more about it.  It's odd how we develop hangups about things that were intended to be enjoyable pastimes, but that's probably another post for another day.

But crocheting?  You can't find someone more willing to advertise her obliviousness across the Interwebs.  I have to check books for explanations of the most basic stitches and I Google nearly every word in a crochet pattern.  Repeatedly.  And then I tell you about it.  If I ever tried to post anything to the contrary, you'd see right through me.

But!  At least when I tell you that the crochet blackberry stitch is simple, you know it really must be.  When I first heard of it, I was expecting something wildly complicated that would result in a bobble that realistically resembled an actual blackberry.  But that was apparently just my very literal imagination running away with me after taking advantage of my awe at some of the designs in Baby's Diagonal Aran Afghans--which features the crochet blackberry stitch in the Blackberries and Crosses pattern.  

Imagine my surprise and delight to discover that the blackberry is a bit like working a picot stitch!  It's a simple and easy way to make a cute little embellishment. The blackberry is worked by chaining 3 stitches and then crocheting a single crochet as you typically would in between 2 single crochets.  See for yourself!

See?  Easy as (blackberry) pie. Sorry.  I had to.  (Yes, I know blackberry cobbler is more common.) This stitch just seems like one of those neat little tricks crocheters sometimes pull off that add so much to a project.  And while Baby's Diagonal Aran Afghans may as well be sitting with the sci-fi and fantasy books on my shelf because of how impossible its patterns may seem to me right now, I'm learning.  Slowly and surely I'm learning.  I've got the book, I've got access to video tutorials for every technique called for, and now I know how to work the crochet blackberry stitch.

It seems like a good place to start!

When Bad Gauge Happens to Good People

You will notice that this is not a hat.

I nearly typed "good crocheters" in the title space, but realized good crocheters probably crochet a gauge swatch.  So I'll go ahead and call myself a good person who is having some bad gauge problems at the moment.  Be nice to me--I had to unravel an entire hat.

A very, very large hat. 

"You're not too big!" I told it a few short, naive days ago.  "You're just big-boned....."

I was working on the Basic Beanie from Crochet Slouchy Beanies and Headwraps.  I like the pattern, I like the way the hat was looking, and I like the yarn. 

But I completely missed the little note about crocheting a swatch to determine gauge.  I did, however, assume that since my gauge normally tracks with the requirements of a pattern that I would be fine using the crochet hook size in the book.  And you know what happens when you assume: you wind up with a hat far too large for any healthy human head to ever wear and you unravel a few days' worth of work.

I had wanted to give the hat the benefit of the doubt because it is supposed to be slouchy, but once I hit the decrease row and the poor thing still looked like a freaking storage basket I knew it was all over.

So what do you do when bad gauge happens to you?

Well, for starters you make improper gauge sound like something that just happens instead of being something you do to yourself through careless impatience. 

Then, you examine your project to see if it will fit someone smaller or larger than the intended wearer if you're making some kind of wearable item. 

Otherwise, you unravel the poor wretched creature as quickly as possible in the hopes that this will erase the memory of this great tragedy (or, you know, mildly frustrating experience.  It all depends on the kind of day you've had, I guess) and then you take that ball of yarn and you re-check your pattern and you get to work on that gauge swatch!  You will rise above this!  You will shake your crochet hooks defiantly at the sky, gather up your supplies to try again, and then tell your loved ones that this is completely acceptable behavior!

Optional: whining about it on the Internet. 

Ugh, it still doesn't fit!

That last step isn't especially helpful, but I highly recommend it.  It's good for the soul.  Or your gauge.  Or something.

WIP Wednesday: Crochet Crazy

Well!

I think this is a first.

I have only crocheted works in progress at the moment.  I mean, there are a couple of knitting projects that I've left languish for so long that I don't think the word "progress" can be used in any way to describe them.  But in terms of active, I-remember-the-last-time-I-touched-this, working on things "works in progress" I just have crochet.  How about that?!

First up is the Basic Beanie from Crochet Slouchy Beanies and Headwraps.  I don't think I've ever crocheted a hat before, so I wanted something basic.  This pattern name did not lie.  6 rounds of increases and then a whole bunch of double crochet stitches.  It's mindless and repetitive and I like to work on a few rounds before bed.  I started out with a different color, and then decided I wanted something else.  So I started over with a skein of Imperial Yarn that I bought last month and OHMYGOODNESSTHISISPRETTYANDAMAZINGANDWONDERFULANDALSOPRETTYYYYYY!  Sorry to get all squealy, but I really loved the yarn and bought it even though I didn't know what I would do with it (it was on sale.  Of course).   

I'm starting to wonder if it's going to be a bit too roomy, even though I am crocheting the smaller size.   But this is supposed to be quite slouchy.

That being said, this skein is something like 400 yards of peacock-hued glory so I could conceivably finish this hat and move down to an H hook to G hook with enough yarn for another hat.

 I wouldn't even mind making this hat all over again. 

But first I need to get a little farther on the Split Headwrap, also from Crochet Slouchy Beanies and Headwraps.

This is where I was at yesterday:

And this is what I have today!

I'm nearly finished with the first split on the first side, a task which I accomplished with about 30 or 40 minutes of TV-watching. I'm really enjoying this project and I'm oddly excited for the color changes that are coming up on the yarn (Lion Brand Amazing).

And then there's this guy.

This sad little scrubber is probably the same size as when I last wrote about it.  I don't even know why!  With a half dozen more rows and a nice border, I could throw another dishcloth on my gift pile.  I've dipped into it a couple of times in the past week and I want to keep those numbers at a satisfactory level. 

Soon, little dishcloth.  Soon.  At the rate I'm crocheting, I should have some finished objects to show for it any day now.  Yay crochet!