crochet Archives - Page 8 of 46

A seat cover at long last

Back in the summer of 2013 I got my bike, and you may recall I was obsessed with making accessories for it. I started a seat cover, got the flat portion done (including some swanky 80s-style crisscrossing chains), and put it away in my yarn storage boxes. For nearly two years. When I cleaned those out earlier this year, I kept the seat cover as something I would still like to finish, and finish it I did. The bike’s still in a closet, so I call this picture “waiting for spring.”

I added several rounds of crochet around the sides of the cover with 8 or 10 decreases per round most rounds (up to 2 each at front, back corners, and curve of sides). I didn’t really know how it should be done, but I was crocheting across the room from the closet my bike was in so I was able to test the fit easily. Quite pleased and hoping my tailbone will be happier with the beginning of biking season this year!

First time wet-felting

Just over a year ago, I bought a skein of Noro Kureyon, a scratchy wool yarn the yarn shop proprietor said was good for felting. I couldn’t decide what to make with it, so it sat for ages. Well, with my new drawing habit, I wanted something to keep my pencil and eraser in – mostly so they would be easier to hold on to when I wanted to move between the dining table and sewing room table.

The shape I decided on was a barrel with a flap in the long direction, buttoned down near each end. The pattern is at the bottom of this post (behind the cut, if you’re on my main blog page); before that are my experiences with the felting process.

My pre-felting measurements:
Gauge: a bit over 11 stitches and a bit under 13 rows in 4″.
The rectangle is 10.75″ tall and just over 9″ wide.

assembled pouch pre-felting, showing end

I read this was a good but slow felting yarn, and decided to help it along by brushing it with a cat brush before starting the felting process. I don’t know whether it helped, but then I don’t have any comparison.

I started with two rounds of wash-wash-rinse in my giant washing machine, with two spiky plastic dryer balls for company and a little bit of soap. The machine was set on heavy soil, hot water, and the heavy duty cycle, and the pouch was in a mesh bag to keep in lint. Even after a run in the dryer, very little happened (the results are the first 3 pictures above). Afterward I did a round of hand-felting by shaking the pouch (without a mesh bag) with the dryer balls in a plastic canister, in two changes of water, each with a bit of dish soap and one also with baking soda. I read that hard water inhibits felting, and while I wouldn’t call ours hard, it’s far from soft. Another trip through the dryer, and still just about nothing (last picture above).

After a bit more research, I learned this “good for felting” yarn has a reputation online for being persnickety about felting. I went back to the washing machine, but more seriously. Same settings, with a round of wash-wash-rinse, but this time with two pairs of pants in addition to the dryer balls, a kettleful of nearly boiling water added to each wash, and a pretreatment of soaking the pouch in ice water before the first wash – the temperature change is supposed to help shock the fibers open. No mesh bag, either, because it didn’t seem to be shedding badly.

That is when the magic happened. So much smaller, so little stitch definition. I don’t know how much was the particular method I used last and how much was the fibers finally being ready to give up their original shape, but I can say I’ll start with this method next time. A shave (see notes on razors in an earlier post) and some buttons and it was ready for use!

Final measurements: 7″ seam to seam and 8.5″ end to end, since the ends are poofed out. Not quite 9″ around from opening to end of flap (what would be the height of the original rectangle); 2.5″ diameter. The rectangle lost almost 2″ in each direction.

Continue reading First time wet-felting

Circumscribing the mystery

The afghan is bordered! Amazing. It takes rather a while to get all the way around a queen-sized afghan.

Anyway. After adding the Greek key panels, I went back to clue 8 for the border. I read a project note that opined the border was too curvy for such a geometric afghan, but it reminds me of wrought iron, which goes perfectly with the stained glass idea.

[The photo looks a little unreal because I brightened the shadows so you could see the texture of the border, and then tweaked the tint and saturation because it looked unappealingly washed out.]

The pattern described the border as cable stitch, but it’s not like what I think of as crochet cable stitch. Instead it’s a series of arcs that slightly overlap each other. I changed it a little bit, but just the very beginning (and consequently the end) and how it acts at corners.

For the single crochet base (round 2), of course I didn’t have the right stitch count. Just make sure that each side stitch count is a multiple of 3, not counting the stitches in the very corners (the middle of the 3 sc made into the previous corner stitch). [In particular, on side 1 don’t count your first sc, because it will become the middle of 3 at the end.]

Mark the joining slip stitch of round 2 with a stitch marker. In round 3, when you make your first arc, skip 3 stitches, not two. Mark the first of those skipped stitches with a stitch marker – that is where your last arc will connect – and make sure when you “sc in 2 skipped sts” they are the unmarked two.

Proceed down the side, skipping the next 2 unworked stitches each time you attach a new arc, until you get to the corner. You’ll attach an arc to the very corner stitch, and the next arc will be joined to the next stitch after: make the “sc in 2 skipped sts” 2 sc in the very corner stitch, to make 3 sts in the corner counting the previous arc’s end. In the diagram, the heaviest lines are round 2. The dashed lines are the “sc in 2 skipped sts.”

When you get to the last corner, the arc that is attached to the very corner stitch will be attached to the slip stitch you marked. You can try to attach it to the same sc as the sl st is made into, which is really where it belongs, but that might be difficult. The next arc, which is the one that cups the corner, is attached to the other marker stitch, the first of the 3 you skipped in making the first arc (dotted line in diagram). When you go to “sc in 2 skipped sts” you’ll only sc once (dashed line in diagram), again into the slip stitch that ended round 2. The second sc is the one you made at the very beginning of the first arc. Now you can sl st to that sc, and proceed as instructed with round 4.

I was pleased to realize that although my last arc ended in front of the first arc, because of the backtracking I didn’t have to cut my yarn between rounds 3 and 4 – I was already in the back where I needed to be.

I took a break between skeins to secure the yarn tails, so I have to figure out how to photograph the whole thing, wash it, do the final trimming, and get the on-bed glamour shots. Until next time!