The Reverse Gypsy Shawl

I found a shawl I liked in an old Golden Hands magazine (“Throw on a Gypsy Shawl), but it began with “Chain 284.”  No.  So I figured out how to start it at the point (“Chain 5”) and then realized I didn’t like how open it was and changed every other row to hdc instead of dc, and simplified the row ends and discarded the border and change the yarn weight and hook and  basically ended up with a different shawl.  It’s pretty much a lacy granny pattern so it can be done in any weight yarn with any hook, a simple two row repeat.

Your Basic Hat

The basic crochet hat pattern is all about counting:

Row 1: Ch 4 and then put 11 more dc in the first ch (other 3 ch counts as a dc) (12 dc).

Row 2: Ch 3 (counts as dc), dc in same stitch, 2dc in rest of stitches (24 dc).

Row 3:  Ch 3 (counts as dc), 2dc in next stitch, then [dc in next stitch, 2dc in next stitch) eleven times (36 dc).

The Secret Paths Slouchy Hat

Love this yarn.  Love this hat.

Worsted weight yarn
K and I hooks
US terms

Beginning ch (2 or 3) counts as dc.

February 2017

I’m still not organized–there’s a shock–but I did get some things done:

January 2017

So while my country goes to hell, I’m cleaning up my crochet life.  This year I’m finishing four pre-2017 WiPs a month, at least.  A lot of them will only take an hour or two of work, so it’s absolutely do-able.  And if I look at it and think, “I don’t want to do you any more,” I can frog.  Since I have over eighty WiPs, this may be more than a 2017 project, especially since I am driven to start new things, but I can put a dent in it.  And along the way, I can destash, clean out my Dropbox crochet folder, and maybe write some of the patterns I’ve designed.

So for this month, I’ve finished:

The Irish Rose

The Irish Rose pattern is old, old, old, as old as Irish lace.  Of course the lace roses were done with thread and a tiny hook, but you can use yarn and a much bigger hook to make bigger flowers faster.  Bonus: no working into stitches, the Irish Rose petals are all worked into chained loops.  If you can chain, sc, hdc, and dc, you can make an Irish Rose.

The Egg-and-Cress-From-the-Beginning-of-Time Scarf

In Terry Pratchett’s Eric, the characters go back to the beginning of time, watch the world pop into existence, and meet the Creator, who’s eating an egg and cress sandwich. They’re on an empty beach and the first tide rolls in, and somebody tosses the egg and cress into a tidepool where it washes into the ocean:

“Tidal action turned it over. Thousands of bacteria suddenly found themselves in the middle of a taste explosion, and started to breed like mad. If only there had been some mayonnaisse, life might have turned out a whole lot different. More piquant, and perhaps with a little extra cream in it.” Eric, by Terry Pratchett, page 151

This was also the birth of the Egg-Cress-Sandwich-From-The-Beginning-Of-Time Scarf.

Plants Vs. Zombies Scarf

The people in our house love Plants Vs. Zombies, the game where you use plants to repel the zombies trying to cross your lawn and eat your brains. The energy in the game is supplied by sunflowers that smile up at you from the PvZ checkboard lawn until a zombie eats them. This scarf is a PvZ sunflower scarf, a plain dc scarf with ends made from nine closed granny squares in light and dark green, doubled to make pockets appliqued with sunflowers that you can fill with whatever powers you: Snickers, granola bars, Red Bull, etc. I used Knitpicks Stroll Tonal on this one, but the colors are wrong; I’d suggest looking at Knitpicks Palette colors to try to get closer to the colors in the game.

Dogs and Goddesses Collage

Buffy’s Sun Jacket

This is Buffy’s Sun Jacket, made from a pattern I found on Ravelry.  I tried this first in the recommended Homespun yarn and didn’t like how bulky it was, so I started over with the Bernat, a much smoother yarn. I’m happier with the fabric I’m getting now although it still seems bulky for a baby. I also moved up to the 12 mo. size so that helps.