firecat

I'm finding crochet very calming while I'm waiting to find out what's wrong with my sick kitty. I'm working on squares for a sampler afghan.

This is my favorite square so far. I love the ribbed texture and the stretchiness.

I'm running out of this yarn so I bought a bunch more, at annoying old Joann's, in blending colors. It's very cheap yarn, $2.50 for - 12 oz? - and I suppose the end product won't stand very many washings, but it works well enough.

I also bought some soft, fuzzy Lion Brand skeins to make a scarf or something.

Current Mood: stubbornly distracted
Current Music: "K.466 - Allegro" - Mozart * Piano Concertos

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From:

chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com

There is a book out there called 53 heirloom squares or something like that...you start out doing squares with the most basic of stitches and gradually get more complicated. I've always recommended this book for beginners, the biggest bitch is keeping track of the squares in the correct order when you piece it together, if you are that anal about such things. I didn't give a rats butt and just put it together my way and it was fine. :)

I love crochet, I have more yarn than the local craft store. Yard sales and goodwill are good places to find bunches of yarn where someone bought it to start a project and decided not to do it. The yarn you are using looks like the Jiffy kids yarn, but I'm not sure. I will tell you that Red Heart yarn, while cheap, plentiful and with a good variety of colors, etc, will turn hard and crunchy if you wash it in hot water or put it in a dryer. So cold wash, hang up to dry. Lion brand is my favorite yarn. I also like going to the speciality yarn shops where they have the import yarns.

There is a crochet community here on LJ, and gardengnome is basically a crochet goddess, LOL.....

Crochet is a good kitty vigil pasttime. I have a bluejillion patterns in books and papers that I keep in a big filing cabinet, it fills it. I inherited all my grandmothers and then have bought many books over the years. Leisure Arts is the only company (IMHO) worth buying thier books, especially if you are beginner, because they have a pattern test staff so that every pattern is done by at least two or three people to make sure the instructions are clear with no mistakes. Annies Attic, House of White Birchs, American School of Needlework, none of these companies do this, and just about every pattern I've ever tried to do from them had errors in it and I could not use it until I became more skilled and was able to figure out how to get around the mistake.

If there is every anything in particular you are looking for a pattern for, feel free to ask me, I probably have the pattern. During the two months I was cooped up in the cabin with no internet access I taught myself thread/lace crochet, so I have those too.

babble babble babble...yup, I love crochet. :)

From:

firecat

Thanks for all the tips, especially the one about Red Heart yarn, because that's what I am using. All my squares are coming out different sizes. The book talks about steaming them to get them all to the same size. Can that be done with Red Heart? Sounds like not. If not, I guess I'm just going to have to get creative about piecing them together!

I'm going to start a file to save your tips.

From:

nolly.livejournal.com

How different in size are they?

From:

firecat

As much as 1/2 - 1 inch per side

From:

chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com

Generally it's wise to do a gauge test strip with each square, there should be instructions on how to do that in your book.

What I found when I first started was that with the different stitches I was using different tension on the yarn (the way I held the yarn and "fed" it into the hook) and that caused differences in the pieces.

I still sometimes get slightly off sizes when I do patchwork pieces. Generally I just throw rounds of single or half double crochets around the outer edge with each square to make them the same size. Remember to do at least three stitches in each corner when you go round the corners so that they don't warp. Also, if they are as little as 1/4 inch off all the way around or less, you can stretch them when you piece them together and it's no big deal.

You can probably rinse the squares in cold water and then use pearl head pins and pin them to a corkboard or an ironing board to stretch them out some, I've had good luck with that with Red Heart.