Moogly CAL Blanket 2016

[purplecat]

I've been following the Moogly Crochet Blog for a while and found myself increasingly taken with the fortnightly squares that were being posted as part of their "crochet-a-long" so, once I had finished B's vast crochet thing, I set about making the 2016 sqaures (this was in August, there was a lot of frantic catch-up crocheting). In theory I was using leftover bits of wool, but I ran out of these about halfway through and had to buy more - this became increasingly stressful since the original supply of wool I had acquired on the cheap because it wasn't being produced any more.

Anyway, the final result is this blanket:





I have already started on the first of the 2017 squares and have bought all the wool except for one colour I am as yet undecided about.

Comments

[alatefeline]

Wow! That is SO COOL!!!

[angelofthenorth]

WOW that's gorgeous.

[purplecat]

Thanks!

[nanila]

This is fantastic and I could stare at it for quite a long time.

[purplecat]

Thanks!

[heliopausa]

That's very handsome indeed!

[cordeliadelayne]

Wow, that looks amazing! I love the colours.

And timely, as I was meaning to ask if you've got any recommendations for a good dummies guide to starting crocheting? My dad bought me a crochet kit for Christmas and the instructions may as well be written in Chinese for all the sense they're making.

[purplecat]

Sadly not really. I started out with "Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes" but found the instructions difficult to follow and spent a lot of time on the internet googling stuff (and even then got it wrong). Since then I'd say all my experiences with crocheting instructions have been similarly frustrating - a lot of having a go, having an "oh! that's what they meant!" moment and then unravelling it and trying again.

It doesn't help that British and American crochet terms are different - what the British call a double crochet (abbreviated as dc), the Americans call a single crochet (abbreviated as sc) and what the British call a treble crochet (abbreviated as tr) the Americans call a double crochet (abbreviated as dc) - I'm sure you can imagine all the potential confusion.

That said, Moogly blog is pretty good if you don't mind video tutorials. I'd start by trying a couple of small squares consisting of a starting chain and then rows of single and/or double crochet (American usage).

If your crochet kit is for amigurumi then you'll need to know how to do a magic circle, and increase and decrease single crochet (American terms). I would expect the patterns to start something like

Make a magic circle (look this up on the internet).

Round 1: 1 ch, 4 sc, sl st into first stitch in round (this means chain 1 (look up chains) then do four single crochet and then slip stitch into the top of the chain - you should be able to find video tutorials for all these.

Round 2: 1 ch, 1 sc in same stitch, 2 sc in each sc of previous round, sl st into first stitch in round (this means chain 1 (to start the new round) and single crochet into the same stitch (this is to fake a single crochet increase but with a chain as the first stitch), do two single crochet in each single crochet of the previous round (this is a standard increase, the one you were trying to fake with the 1 ch, 1 sc - look it up), and then slip stitch into the the top of the chain you first made.

... and so on.

Hope this helps.

[cordeliadelayne]

Thank you! I think video tutorials might be helpful to start with so I'll definitely take a look at Moogly blog. I guess I just need to set some time aside to properly look into it - I was hoping it would be as easy as cross-stitch, but clearly not!

[purplecat]

TBH, the basic stitches (chain, single crochet and double crochet) are pretty easy they're just hard to explain, if you see what I mean.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

Wow. That is some work.

[purplecat]

Thanks!

[fredbassett]

That's brilliant!

[purplecat]

Thanks!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That is an amazing work of art. Are the squares in order of date of creation, or did you choose how to structure it at the end?

[purplecat]

Because I only acquired the bright yellow yarn halfway through, I didn't think date order would work so instead used the integer sequence generator at Random.org.

It's just as well I waited until the end because the squares were all over the place size-wise and so there was quite a lot of adding extra stitches to bring them all to the same size.