50 Shades of Crochet

Lately I’ve been working on a square and have been enjoying every stitch, every moment.  So much so, it would not be an exaggeration to call it the highlight of each day.  Now how is it that crocheting can generate such heights of pleasure?

Maybe it’s because I’m using a high quality pure wool yarn in a warming winter palette.  It is soothing to look at and the wool feels earthy.   

It’s my first solid square worked in half treble crochet.   It creates a dense fabric which feels weighty and satisfying.  I don’t know if I can describe it as sensuous but it is so lovely to work with.  I now understand what people mean by ‘favourite yarn’.

I started making this square where outside I was bombarded with delicious food on every street corner, fabulous shopping, and the sway of excited crowds all around.  And within this setting I was also trying to concentrate on a job – I was hyped up on so many levels.  What a luxurious little respite it was to get away for some crochet!

Crocheting is creating, and therefore the opposite of consuming.  I don’t know about you, but consumption tends to make me feel sick – it is the natural result of gorging oneself.

And there is also electronic consumption.  (Waste a whole day on pinterest?  My guilty hand is raised!) 
  

 Follow The Devil Makes's board Trending on Pinterest.

 

Crochet is so remote from the hi-tech realm that it must re-set some basic pleasure receptors.  Working with natural fibres, and the simplicity of hook and yarn, brings us back to some very common denominators.

In half treble crochet, the loops are released in a single movement, making the stitch simple and quick.  Perhaps this contributed to making my square so enjoyable to work on.  But  I find the action of crochet in any stitch very grounding.  You are forced to move at the real pace of production.  Crochet is a slow, manual craft that can belong to the category of slow movements that are popular these days.

In our busy modern world, homing in and focusing on the tiny loop and repetitive action brings us back to the internal quiet, a place to escape.  Let’s revel in its pleasures. 

 

Crochet-A-Long

What is a Crochet-A-Long ("CAL")?  A pattern is released a little bit at a time, and you crochet according to the instructions, not knowing what the final product will be.  The fun part is that people from all over are working on it at the same time, and it gets very exciting when more and more of the pattern is released and your piece evolves!

This one that I've been working on is for my lovely group, Knit4Charities and their conference and Charity of the Month project.

Well I still don't know how the final piece is going to look.  But I've learnt stitches and techniques, all of them new to me.

Finally I got all my squares and triangles right and the same size

And completed Part 2, which was the most difficult so far - to decipher and crochet!  I also got to create a border by pattern (rather than by experiment)

This square for Part 3 had me doing Puff Stitch for the first time

CALS can be found anywhere amongst crochet and knit groups.  Sometimes bloggers will put one together for their followers.  Being part of a CAL is a really good way to challenge yourself and learn a heap of new stuff, alongside all the other people happily crocheting-a-long in unison.

Thrift: putting it to work

Sometimes I think I must’ve been born thrifty - I just can’t help myself.  And there are times when I wish I wasn’t, because it would save me a hell of a lot of time and effort.  

Food - Don't Waste It British Poster from Imperial War Museum

On the whole though, practising thrift does bring much satisfaction, providing everything turns out right.

So far I’ve enjoyed being resourceful with two charity squares.  The first square was knitted from a yarn that refused to co-operate. 

I was given some stash yarn “it’s pure wool but it’s no good:  look how easily it breaks!”  I thought I had nothing to lose by trying to get a square out of it.  I happily got some of the way when it started thinning out, so that the slightest tension would cause it to break.  Then I came to breaks in the yarn every 10-20cm.   I had to unpick to put the breaks at the beginning of a row so I could avoid knots.

Well I was determined that I would get a square out of this naughty yarn, I wasn’t going to see it wasted in the worm farm!  So persist I did.  And there were times when I was calmed by just enjoying the harmonious colours of the yarn resting on the needles.

 

It was worth it in the end because now I have one more charity square to donate.

The second troublesome thrifty square was crafted from the extra glove that didn’t work out.  How could I turn this into a 25cm square?  It was too small and rectangular, with wobbly edges and uneven tension.  I had made it worse by randomly crocheting on rows to use up leftover yarn, and to try and get it to size. 

 I could not switch off my thrifty mind which insisted on getting a use out of it.

So I decided to crochet around the outside till it grew to the right size.  (Later, I discovered that this is a common approach known as edging!)

 
I figured out I could gather up the ‘ease’ on the floppy side by decreasing the stitches, and decided to predetermine the same number of stitches per side by eyeballing with safety pins. 

 This didn’t work at all because the edge just didn’t fit, and it went all curly. 

It meant I had to unpick, and re-mark which stitches to work.  The safety pins were more time consuming than I thought, so instead I tacked around before taking the pins out.  In the end it didn’t work either, still too few stitches for a flat edging.

So my third idea was to use a smaller hook, do many more stitches, and this time COUNT!  The first round went ok, and I realised the importance of counting consistent stitches.  I used the safety pins again, but decided 4 stitches should go between each marker.  This way it could take up slack but with enough detail to go unnoticed.

What I forgot to do was the correct number round the corners.  So there was more unpicking and a fourth attempt.  It’s true that it would’ve been quicker to frog the whole thing and start again.  But I was gonna get a square out of this, dammit!

 

The square got done with much relief and satisfaction and I could say that in the end, I even liked the bastard.

Darn

I’m slowly enjoying every morsel of my new book.  I’m starting to look at things with a new perspective and it’s very refreshing.

I found India’s Flint's sewing circle, Found Stitched Dyed and began to glean images in my head.

I spotted a hole and suddenly my mouth started watering.  I could not wait to get my hands on it!

I had darned before in the past but it was improvised and I didn’t know I was actually darning.  Interestingly, it was just common sense and I had done it correctly.

Some years ago during the Keep Calm and Carry On craze, I’d bought this book.  Now at last I could revel in some good old-fashioned instruction and apply some traditional methods.

I first sewed the vertical warp.  There was also an instruction point about covering a wider area which made good sense.

Then I sewed in the weft.  What I didn’t know was that knitted fabrics should have a diagonal weft.  My scant knowledge of fibre behaviour means I don’t yet understand why this is.  So if you know, I’d love to be enlightened!

On closer inspection, I found little holes and quickly gobbled them up.  Usually with one or two cross-like stitches.

Now this jumper has several more years’ wear.  Mending it has provided a feeling of great satisfaction.

How to read a pattern

Don’t be put off reading a pattern just because it looks like gobbledygook!  Actually, patterns are not my forte, especially when trying to follow a pattern without a diagram.  I work much better using visuals – I seldom use rulers.

 

I am doing my first Crochet-A-Long mystery piece, organised for Knit 4 Charities' 10th Anniversary conference.  All the volunteers make a bit at a time, and everything will be put together at the end to make a wonderful final piece for donation.  Nobody knows what it's going to be!  Part 1 required 4 squares and 4 triangles.  The only information I had was the pattern instructions and the finished size.  I knew I wasn’t reading the pattern right when my squares were the wrong size…and all different!

 

So here are some pattern-reading strategies I discovered after much trial and error.

Read in lines, not in stitches

I would very much like it if patterns were set out with rows in corresponding lines.  Alas this is not to be and I’m sure a lot of page space is saved by not starting new lines all the time.

Try to find punctuating repeats in a pattern.  For example with a square, finding the comers first will help set the rest out.  Corners would be marked in brackets, because you are working the numerous corner stitches into one space, to make the work ‘turn’ the corner.

Make it visual

To find the corners easily, I colour coded my pattern.  Check visually that the spaces, clusters (or whatever you have worked), are symmetrical.

Make a template

After a few attempts without a successful result, I thought of drawing my own diagram.  This turned out to be even harder than crocheting because lines on the paper don’t bend, move and thread as yarn does.  So once you have crocheted one correct square, you can refer back to it as a template.

Work single-mindedly

Decoding a pattern takes concentration, especially when there are small differences in similar sequences (for example, the same sequence but with a single ch inserted).  I made the most mistakes when I tried to read a pattern while watching tv, or chatting.  Here's what happened when hooking into the wrong space: a curly triangle

So stay focused.  You will only get the full effect of your crochet flow when you are truly absorbed in counting stitches instead of the to-do list!

Trust the word

The tricky part where we all trip up is interpreting.  When I had made a mistake in the previous row, it meant that there were not the right number of spaces to work with in the next row.  That means it’s time to go back and check your interpretation.  To help with this,

Make notes as you go

As I went along, I jotted down my interpretation.  So if I found a mistake, I could go back and check how I had understood it.  If you don’t do this, when you go back to undo, you will not remember what you did and so are likely to repeat the mistake.  Yes, I learnt this the hard way!

Work to a rhythm

I found it helpful to work to medium-paced music, something repetitive like a mantra (= the turn of the hook), or canonical (= the sequence of patterns) like those of JS Bach.

Finally, don’t give up!

Re-doing work just means you get to crochet more … turning, weaving, making … just enjoying that lovely process.