Continuing to Improve My Crochet

 Hi all -

Spring is definitely in the air! We had snow and cold early in the week, but now we are looking at some nice 50-60 degree days. I'm loving the change! 

This week I've continued to work on improving my crochet skills and my understanding of the patterns. My first project was a couple of Easy Breezy Dishtowels designed by Allison Rusterholz:

Easy Breezy Dishtowels

These were the March 2023 crochet projects for the Jimmy Beans Wool Accessory Club. I love this club because you get the yarn for a new project each month along with a knit pattern and a crochet pattern so you can pick your craft (or, if you don't like the accessory, save the yarn for something else). It's fun to get the surprise in the mail and the projects are quick to complete. 

Easy Breezy Dishtowel

This was a simple disk towel to crochet. It was good practice for seeing which stitches are the first and last stitches of each row. If you get mixed up on seeing the stitches, the dish towel will be skewed. It was mostly made of single crochet stitches, but the accent color row was a more complicated stitch so it was good practice for stitches, too. If I make any more of these dish towels, I'll make the towels a bit longer. This pattern was designed to allow you to get two dish towels out of the provided yarn, so the towels were a bit short. It's also good to have different cotton yarns to try for dish towels and dishcloths so I can decide which yarns I like the best in the kitchen. The different yarns feel different and absorb water and wring out differently. I like making things like this for gifts, since I think people find them pretty and useful.

The next project I worked on was the Basic Beanie designed by Stacey Trock:

Basic Beanie

This is one of the projects from the Craftsy "Crocheting in the Round: Mix & Match Hats" class that I purchased years ago. I've been watching my crochet classes in my spare time to help with my learning. I made this out of some very old (1990's) cheap acrylic yarn that I purchased back then for a simple crochet afghan that a friend showed me how to make. (The ball band still had the price tag on it -- $1.27 per skein. ) I hadn't gotten very far before I got side-tracked, then when I got back to the project I had lost touch with the friend and couldn't remember what I was doing so I ended up ripping it out. I've been trying to use up this yarn for several years now. I used the last of the pink yarn in the hat and just had a skein of the mauve left when I finished this hat. I think the pink ran out at just the right place for the design! You can wear the hat as is for a slouchy look, or you can turn up the brim for a more fitted look:

Basic Beanie with brim turned up

Although the yarn was pretty stiff and kind of yucky to work with, the hat is softer and warm.

To continue my learning and to use up more of the acrylic yarn, I next decided to work on a headband. I found a pattern that I thought would be easy, but I ended up having trouble with the construction. The hat was easy to make -- you start at the top with a small circle and then just crochet in a spiral until you are done (making increases in the top of the hat to get the shaping). The headband I found had you start at the center of the back and crochet around until you get back to the center back. At that point, you would connect the two sides, but then would turn the work and go back around in the other direction. This was done to get the desired stitch pattern. I tried to follow the pattern and connect things, but my connection at the back looked really bad so I ended up ripping out the project and I'll try it again some other time. I'm not sure if the problem was my yarn or my lack of crochet proficiency, but both will be improved in the future!

Instead of the headband, I decided to work on a small basket and I found a free pattern for the Hanging Nest Basket from Amanda Corvello Designs:

Hanging Nest Basket

This is a small basket designed to hang on the wall to hold small things like scissors by the sewing machine or sunglasses by the door. I figured this would be a good project for the acrylic yarn since it's stiffer like the cotton yarn you would normally use for baskets and I want to get it used up. The crocheting was a bit fiddly since this yarn splits evenly, but I think the basket turned out pretty well. I still have a half skein of the mauve acrylic yarn to use up, so I'm getting really close to finishing that off!

Finally, to get a break from crochet and from the acrylic yarn, I did a little work on my After the Storm Cardigan designed by Kelly Fowler. I started working on this sweater last summer, but put it aside recently to work on some smaller projects, so it was nice to get it out again. I was in the middle of the ribbing at the bottom of the body so I finished up the ribbing and bound off the body:

After the Storm Cardigan front

After the Storm Cardigan back

It doesn't look much different than last time I shared, but it was a good deal of work. The 1x1 ribbing used takes a bit of time, but the bind off took forever! The pattern suggested a bind off that I'd never tried before -- a ribbed sewn bind off. This bind off is sewn with a darning needle rather than knit. It's designed specifically to be used with 1x1 ribbing. For the knitters out there, it's just like doing a Kitchener stitch, but you just have one fabric. It produced a nice, stretchy edging, but it took forever. Most of the time was spent managing the long piece of yarn I used for the sewing. You need to have a long enough piece of yarn to finish the bind off since it would be difficult to add yarn in the middle of the bind off. Since this is the bottom of a sweater with 10" positive ease made for a larger person, that was a long piece of yarn. Running that yarn through so many stitches roughed up the yarn a lot and it would twist and tangle quite a bit during the stitching. Although the yarn was quite worn, it seemed to keep its integrity, so I think the bind off will hold up just fine with time now that it's done. I don't know if I would use this bind off again for such a long edge. 

Well, that's everything for this week. My niece is traveling from Seattle to Kansas City, so we're going to spend the day together in Denver tomorrow. Lance's lack of mobility (he's 16 now and has a neurological problem with his back legs that makes it difficult for him to walk) means that we can't travel except to visit the vet every other week for acupuncture. So I haven't seen my family since the beginning of January last year. So I'm really looking forward to seeing her! 

Nancy