Day 30 of National Crochet Month Blog Tour with Crochetville!

Hi everyone! I'm glad you've stopped by to visit. I'm glad to be a part of National Crochet Month's blog tour organized by Amy and Donna from Crochetville, and I'm sharing today with Linda Dean. (You can visit her page here.) Don't forget you can view previous posts by visiting the Crochetville Blog post.

There are many things I love about crochet, but what I truly love is how creative people are with different materials. Pop tabs, plastic bags, and so much more. If it's flexible enough and string like, you can crochet with it. I'm hoping that I can possibly provide a little inspiration for your future projects.

While I was working, a woman came up to me to ask if I've ever crocheted with tulle. At this point I hadn't. (I went home that day to experiment with it though.) This sparked my interest in the many different things that people crochet with - and of course, I had a giant roll of tulle hanging around the house. One day I decided that I wanted to try something else with it, so this is one of the things I came up with.

Free Basic Crochet and Tulle Bracelet Tutorial - Get the tutorial for free!
If the link doesn't work try this link: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/basic-tulle-bracelet-photo-tutorial

   

While this bracelet is rather simple looking, it can be a great way to highlight a pretty, decorative button or add flowers, edgings or other adornments to the center of the tulle. You could even add the five petal flower pattern I added a couple of days ago. (Click here to see the free flower pattern.)  You could also use this as a starting point to create unique veils by adding a boarder to a larger piece of tulle. In the next few days, I'll post a couple of ideas for personalizing this bracelet. Be sure to stay tuned.

I'd love to hear about what you come up with. Visit my Ravelry Page to get the free tutorial. 

Through April 6th, you can also get 25% off any pattern in my Ravelry store by entering the promo code: NatCroMo2013.

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Giveaway

Inspired Crochet magazine giveaway!

Two winners will receive a free copy of any Inspired Crochet issue of your choice. To enter to win a copy, simply post a comment on this blog post with an answer to the question: 

Where do you get your crochet inspiration from? 

Comments must be posted by midnight CST on March 31st to be eligible. Winners will be chosen at random and announced April 1st. Winners will need to give me their email addresses, so if you're not comfortable giving me your email address you won't be able to win. 

If you'd like to subscribe to their magazine, they have a current deal: Purchase a subscription for 3 months and get access to ALL of their previous issues! You can subscribe here: http://inspiredcrochet.com/Subscribe

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Other ways to find me: 

Facebook page (Crochet Instructor Kristin Dragos)

Etsy (Kristin's Crochet)

Pinterest (KristinDragos)

You can also sign up for my mailing list by clicking the link at the top of my page. I'll do my best to have mailings out each month (though realistically it may be every other month). I'll be adding free patterns, my tips, tricks, crochet news, as well as information about opportunities to test patterns for me before they are released. 

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day!

Working into the foundation chain

Did you know that there are many ways of working into your starting (foundation) chain? Each has a different look and feel to it. There isn't one right way; how you choose to work into your foundation chain can affect your overall product. Let's first take a closer look at your foundation chain. (For this, I'm using a large crochet hook to make it easy to see the strands of each chain stitch.)

Anatomy of a chain:

If you look closely at your chain, you'll see that on one side there is a series of Vs. The reverse side has a bunch of bumps or ridges. (The front is the side with the Vs.) Each chain stitch is made up of three individual strands. The top and bottom of the V and the back ridge.

A couple of ways of working into the chain:
1. Work stitches under the top strand of the V only.

Using this method the first row of stitches (single crochet stitches in this instance) has a slight gap between them and the starting chain. The unworked loops of the chain will shift slightly toward you as you work this row. 

2. Work stitches under the back ridge (bump).

This method creates a starting edge that is exactly like the finished edge. (It has the same appearance of a row of single crochet stitches.) The advantage here is that it's easier to add additional rows or edgings to this side of your work.


3. Work under the top strand and the back ridge.

This method is similar to the first one I listed in that the remaining, unworked loop of the chain shifts toward the front of your work as you work the first row. This is typically the method I use mostly because I like to have a little substance to where I work my stitches. It does however make working edgings or additional rows (or working on the opposite side of the chain) a little difficult because there's only one strand of the chain left.

There are a couple of other ways you could work into the chain. For example, you could work under both strands of the V. (I find this a little difficult to do especially if you make your chain stitches tight.) There is also a method of working your foundation chain AND the first row at the same time. (YouTube has a number of videos on how to do this. Here's one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A83tzk49DzI)

Ruffle Yarns: More than just scarves

Ruffle yarns, like Red Heart's Sashay yarn, have been really popular lately. It takes a while to get used to working with the yarn, but once you do, it's fun to work with. The first project I made with it was a scarf. It seemed like most people were making scarves with it. I have been wondering what else could be made with this yarn for a while now. In a recent issue of Crochet! magazine, there was a pattern for a ruffle clutch/purse. I decided that I had to see how it would work.

Initially the bag starts with just using one stand of regular worsted weight yarn. To get the ruffles, the sides of the bag are worked with the ruffle yarn AND the worsted weight yarn together. This took me a while to get used to, and I'm still a little slow at it, but I really like how it worked. The sides are pretty dense and thick because of the two yarns.

 

Work in progress:
 

The completed project:

The final project used two skeins of ruffle yarn and one skein of a main color. This project has me thinking of so many other things that could be made with ruffle yarns. For example, a decorative pillow would get some added softness with the yarn. (Though the yarn may snag on earrings or jewelry or anything else. Not to mention that my puppies would love to chew on it. However, that's just the nature of the ruffle yarns.) This pattern could easily inspire additional bag/purse projects with less (or even more) ruffles.

Look for a class on Ruffle Yarns if you'd like additional help with working with these specialty yarns.

Linking crochet stitches

When you have really tall stitches, like the treble crochet stitch, and don't want the holes between stitches, you can link stitches together.  This can be done with all stitches except single crochet stitches.

To link stitches: Insert hook into the horizontal loops of preceding stitch and draw a loop up. This is done in place of doing a yarn over before inserting hook. For a treble crochet, you would do this twice before inserting your hook into the next stitch to complete the stitch.

This swatch is of a group of linked treble crochet stitches.

This stitch helps solve the problem, if you want to call it that, of the large gaps and holes between stitches between normal treble crochet stitches. It also seems to create a double ridge on rows that looks almost like working a stitch in the back loop.

What I don't like about this method is the holes created by the unattached turning chains.  Perhaps not linking every stitch in a row would alleviate the holes on the end if the rows.