Mersydotes

September feels like a new beginning to me- fall is coming with its fresh crispness and colors and pencils are being sharpened as the academic year gears back up.  In recent years, I've also associated another event with the beginning of autumn- the Yarndale Festival in Yorkshire, England.  I've never been (dare to dream!), but I've followed it from afar, especially each year's charity crochet/knitting project.   (image from Attic24 blog, link here ) This year, the charity chosen by the organizers is Mercy Ships, an international medical aid organization sailing around the world, providing surgeries and medical  help  to communities in need.  I can't imagine a better charity to benefit!  As you can imagine, many of the patients are children, and Mercy Ships is collecting handmade stuffed bears to distribute as comfort animals to little ones who are experiencing the stress and anxiety of medical procedures. The 2019 goal is ...

Would anybody mind if we travel back a bit in time together?  Let's head back to September last and across the pond to the Yorkshire Dales.  In a little hamlet lives Lucy, the crochet genius behind the Attic 24 blog.  And every year, Lucy puts out a call for participants for the local yarn festival's charitable display.  I participated once in the past, and it was a pretty neat feeling getting to see my little mandala join in with others from around the globe at Yarndale. This year, the project was to create a flock of amigurumi sheep that would later be sold in area businesses with the profits going to a children's charity.  So I created my little sheep and made her a snazzy sweater to help her face the cold Yorkshire winters.  It took me a bit to get it right, though, and I found the embroidery very fiddly- definitely need to improve my skills!  And the head just wouldn't do the cute little sideways look that it was supposed ...

I recently read a quote from T. S. Eliot :  ********************** "We shall not cease from exploration  And the end of all our exploring  Will be to arrive where we started  And to know the place for the first time." ********************** It made me think of the great big leaps in life as well as the smaller steps of the everyday.  All that we see and learn and feel and explore swirling into a deep appreciation of who we are and where we stand on the Earth. So here are some snapshots of the smaller steps that we took this week- the place where we started and which we are trying to know for the first time:  (New street art in our neighborhood in Queens)  (Busily crocheting an absolutely gigantic rug with t-shirt yarn)  (A pasta sauce jar covered in washi tape, some flowers, and a card from "mi media naranja")  (A happy puppy with a milk mustache) (hors d'oeuvres for dinner, and an awesome...

Ready for a wonderful sense of closure?  Now is the time to "tie up all of our loose ends"!  Hehehehehe! In this tutorial, we will look at how to use a yarn needle to weave in the loose ends left over from our foundation chain and from casting/binding off our last row of stitches.  Depending on how tight the weave of your fabric is, or if you're working in the round, you might choose a plastic needle rather than a metal one for added flexibility. The first step is to flip your work to the back/reverse/wrong side so that your ends won't accidentally poke out of the front.  Then, thread your needle with the yarn tail, and weave it underneath the back loops of the nearest row of stitches:  The more stitches you thread the end under, the more secure it will be.  I wouldn't recommend taking the loose end all the way to the edge of the fabric, as you might be able to notice the frayed end from the front/right side: Finally, all you have to do i...

Although I love to both crochet and knit, crocheting still feels less restrictive and more freewheeling to me.  There aren't as many stitches or sticks to keep track of, and mistakes are easier to fix.  Another plus is that casting (or binding) off in crochet is really straightforward, while in knitting there are myriad ways to end your project. When you come to the last stitch in your final row or round, you'll need a way to secure your fabric so that things don't come unravelled after all your hard work.  I suggest airing on the side of caution and keeping your needle in the final stitch while you cut your working yarn.  Leave a nice, long yarn tail so that you have enough to work with later when you weave in the loose ends:  Then, all you have to do is to pull straight up with your needle to bring the yarn tail through the loop of your final stitch:  And shazam! Now your stitches are secure and ...

Even if you try to be careful while you're crocheting, it's very easy to lose count of how many rows you've completed.  Especially if you're crocheting while chatting, watching TV, daydreaming, etc.!  Here are some photos that might be helpful if you ever need to count your rows.  In each photo, the rows are numbered beginning with the first row of full stitches (not the counting the foundation chain as a row). Single  Crochet Half-Double Crochet Double Crochet Treble Crochet Have fun and happy stitching! Lots of love, ~Mersydotes

Ready to move on to the double crochet stitch (dc)?  Yay!  Also called the treble crochet stitch in UK terms, this stitch is even taller than the half double crochet stitch.  Because it is a taller stitch, we will need to allow for three chains from the foundation row to act as the first stitch.  This means that we will begin stitching in the fourth chain from the hook, shown by the triangle below. This is a tall, two-step stitch, so we need to wrap the yarn once around the hook form the back and over the top before we get started.  This extra yarn wrap will let us build the stitch up in two steps. Next, insert the hook from front to back under the top loop of the fourth chain from the hook. Wrap the yarn around the hook again from the back and over the top and pull it towards you through the loop.  Now, you will have three loops on your hook: Now it's time to build up the first level of the stitch.  Wrap the ya...

In the tutorials about the different kinds of crochet stitches, we talked about how to end/begin rows with a certain number of chains.  This is because crocheting is vertical stitching, and we need to "build up" to every new row.  Sometimes the chains we make at the end/beginning of rows count as the first stitch of the new row, and sometimes they don't.  Here is a chart to help you remember how many chains to make at the end of a row in case you're not working from a pattern that let's you know.  The chart also lets you know if those chains act as a first stitch in a new row.  If so, that means that you must skip the first stitch and start stitching in the second stitch of the new row, thereby allowing the chains to act as the first stitch.   Stitch Type US (UK) End of Row Chains Skip First Stitch? Single Crochet (Double Crochet) 1 no Half-Double Crochet (Half-Treble Cro...

One of the joys of crocheting and knitting is the international online community of blogs, festivals, and publications that are available from all over the world.  I love checking out stitching blogs from the US, the UK, Holland, South America, and all sorts of places.  This also means that there are all sorts of carrying types of crochet terminology, and sometimes we will have to translate patterns in order to share them around the globe.  In this post, I've put together a chart for comparing the terms used in the UK and US for crochet.  If you're not sure if a pattern is written in American or British terminology, one sign is that if there is no mention of single crochet stitches, it's probably a British pattern (unless, of course, there just aren't any single crochet stitches in the pattern!).  I hope this is helpful! US UK Abbreviation Chain Chain ch Sli...