using Jacob's Ladder in the round

My friend Ghost mentioned round Jacob's Ladder patterns and it sparked a tiny memory so I went searching. I found a number of patterns and thought I'd jot down those links in case anyone else was interested and also to remind me when I get the desire to make one.

First here's a hat
http://suzies-yarnie-stuff.blogspot.com/2009/09/suzies-jacobs-ladder-cap.html

Here's another hat using popcorns and the JL technique.
http://crochetncrafts.com/crochet/jacobsladderpopcornhat.html

And here are round afghans using JL.
http://qualitycrochet4fun.blogspot.com/2010/02/freejacobs-ladder-round-ripple-afghan.html

http://www.bevscountrycottage.com/round-jacobs-ladder.html

You can do a lot with this technique. Really you just do a bunch of chains and skip stitches. Then you go back and make the loops for the cable or whatever you want to call it. I love the technique and plan to use it again in other projects.


Happy crocheting!
Sandie

Jacob Ladder afghan

I finished the Jacob's Ladder finally. It was not the actual crocheting that put this behind. I had trouble finding colors where I had enough yarn for the number of rows I wanted to do, that wasn't spoken for in another project. In the end I worked 7 rows for the beginning color stripes and four for the ending. I think it still looks very bright and colorful.

Then just as I was close to finishing, I fell on my hand (yes, you read that right) and could not crochet for a day. Once the swelling went down some, I was able to finish it off. I used a cream for catching the top loop and working an edging around.

Here is a close-up of this one. I did measure it and wrote it down somewhere, but I can't find it and the ghan is gone so ... I think it was about 40" x 47".

If you're not familiar with the Jacob's Ladder I have videos at the YouTube Channel and on the Crochet Cabana video page.

I always second guess myself once a project is done and was thinking I should have used another color for the edging since I have that white stripe in there. But it's done and actually already delivered. I brought it to my mom at the rehab facility. She named just about every relative I have and wanted to know if I'd made one for them already. LOL I have made a lot of ghans and I think most of my family has at least one from me.

I also took a photo of it upside down because I didn't like that orange first row for photographing though it's really nice in the lapghan. Though a bit stiffer and thicker than the other colors, it softened up on washing.

I have some leftover wool-ease from the scarves I made so I am going to go through that and see what I can do with it. I also have some 12" squares made. I need a few more to complete an afghan though. Might work on that as well. Then I have enough yarn for another Who scarf using Chris Brimelow's pattern.

I probably need to rest my hand a little longer before hitting a large project, so I'll do the planning first.

Bookmobile brought me some books on looming so I might pull that out to work with as well. I think I have the same problem with looming that I have with knitting. If I drop a stitch or the loops come off, I am flummoxed and that is that. The actual procedure doesn't seem that difficult.

Oh, I found a new method of casting on in knitting. If you do both crochet and knitting, you might find it interesting. It was in a video at http://vimeo.com/20685066 . I'd never been to Vimeo before, but I saw it mentioned in Kim Guzman's post and went to check it out. Kim is doing a couple of classes over at Crochetville. I'm not sure how it all works though I was tempted to take one. Anyway, I digress. If you watch the video, for the first minute and a half she gives some info and then she goes into the actual procedure. So if you just want to know what to do, start there.


That's all for today!

Happy crocheting!
Sandie

HMD and scarf calculations

First Happy Mother's Day! I am blessed to be the mother of two wonderful children and consider my son-in-law a third. ;-) I am very proud of them all and love them more than I could ever say. They bless me every day.

I hope you and yours enjoyed this special day, set aside for us mothers. Being a mother doesn't mean we're perfect - I certainly wasn't and am not - but we do our best and hope the love fills in the rest.

Now on to crochet ... well, sort of.

If Math scares you, run now. LOL

Susan suggested that since I know the total length of the scarf (9' or 108") and I know the total number of rows (314), I can figure out the length of each row and thus the supposed length of each color stripe. She is absolutely correct. But knowing this and putting it into practice might be a bit more than my little brain and fingers can do. I am going to give it to the old college try though now that she has laid it out for me so well.

I decided to go with mm since it is a small measure which would be easier to see than trying to figure out a percentage of an inch. Being American, working with mm does not come naturally to me. Yeah, we learned it in school, but it apparently did not "take". LOL

Anyway, my research (I googled inches to mm online) showed that 1" is 25mm.

My total scarf is to be 108" which is 2700mm. My actual scarf was 93" including fringe which is 2325mm. That is 375mm (or 15") shorter than desired.

Since my total number of rows is 314 and I need to increase the total length by 375mm, I divided 375mm by 314 rows. That tells me I need to add 1.19mm to each row. We can round that off to 1.2mm.

I measured a section that was 6 rows long on my actual scarf. It was 40mm. Each row has to be 8.6mm. (2700mm / 314 rows).  8.6mm x 6 rows would be 51.60. That's how long it should have been.  Take my word for it that I was 1.29mm off per row. Rounding THAT off to 1.3mm, not bad.

Now the question becomes how to increase my rows by that amount. The difference between a sc and a hdc would be considerably more than any of those figures.

What I have to do now, if I want to get the scarf to approximately the same length as the knitted scarf, is to swatch until I find a hook that will give me 51.6mm per 6 rows.

Tara tells me that her scarf before blocking is about 12" and after blocking 10" in width. Mine was about 10 1/2" (no blocking) so I'm pretty good there. I think I read somewhere 11" width but I can't remember where I read that now. Will check that out later.

I'm thinking of possibly working Chris Brimelow's pattern, just for fun, using the same colors though as I don't want to purchase more yarn right now. I bought a few skeins of Vanna's Choice to supplement what I already had leftover and that should be enough. Michael's had a clearance sale today. :-) [addition: Chris' pattern uses 816 rows (to be divided in half in this case, which is 408 rows]

If anyone is a math whiz and finds an error in my calculations - which could VERY well be LOL - feel free to holler out.

I will keep you posted on the scarf saga.

Happy crocheting!
Sandie

Doctor Who scarf complete

I have finished my Doctor Who scarf and it came out shorter than the knitted version would have so my 1 knit to 1 crochet did not work out as well as I'd hoped.

This one came out about 83" without fringe. The original knitted version is about 9' (108"). However, instructions say to make fringe with a 12" strand of all seven colors. I didn't add fringe to my scarf as I wanted to conserve the yarn for a possible second one - many skeins were only partially used.

To estimate how much longer the fringe would make the scarf, I took a couple of 12" strands and made one fringe on a swatch I had lying around. The fringe ended up being about 5 1/2". With 7 strands in each (one of each of the 7 colors), it might be a tad shorter. So let's say 5".

Fringe on both ends then might add 10" to the scarf. So it would then be about 93". Total length of 108" in the knitted scarf minus 93" would still leave me 15" short which is not as much as originally feared, but still not as close as I'd like.


Since there are 314 rows in Tara's version, adding length on each row by using a hdc might make it too long. Even if each row was only 1mm longer that would be 628mm which is almost 25", so too long.

Another possibility is to use a larger hook and a smaller foundation chain. That would really move away from the knitted look of the smaller stitches. Of course, if I knew how many inches there were of each color I could adjust number of rows as well, but I only have the finished size and the number of knitted rows.

For my purposes, which is just because I wanted to make it, this should be good enough. I thank Witty Little Knitter for all her hard work. Having the specific yarn colors was wonderful, and even though mine was short, having the knitted row numbers was a big help. It gave me a way to go and I'm pleased with the outcome.

Now I'm trying to finish that Jacob's Ladder lapghan I started a while back. Trouble is finding enough yarn in my stash to make 7 rows. Might have to use a creative bit of coloring as I go on. :-)


Happy crocheting!
Sandie

DW scarf progress / hyberbolic planes

Still working on the Doctor Who scarf. I had a couple of setbacks when my dog decided to pull skeins of yarn out of my bag and tangle them to bits. This surprised me as he doesn't generally fool with my yarn. Well, I think he now has gotten the message that this is NOT acceptable behavior. I was able to untangle and rewind the yarn into balls. I just had to remember which was which color for the scarf as I'm following the pattern for the color blocks.

I hope to be able to finish the crocheting in the next day or so, then have to tackle the tails. Here is a photo of where I stand right now. It is about 73" at this point. That is very approximate. I have about 30 rows left I think. I am on my second skein of beige and olive but have a good bit left of the other colors at this point.

If you're interested in all things Who, you might like to have a look at what Amazon has available Search Amazon.com for doctor who. I have four different Who wishlists from the classic to the new series. Particularly close to my heart right now are the The Sarah Jane Adventures since sweet Elisabeth Sladen passed away recently. Such a lovely lady and wonderful actress. She will be missed. Doctor #10 (my favorite, David Tennant) appeared in the The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Third Season and #11 Matt Smith appeared in the 4th season which is not yet on DVD.

But I have taken a turn away from crochet, haven't I? :-) Big Who fan here.

But back to crochet - a couple of weeks ago I discovered the book Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes. VERY interesting reading. I really enjoyed what I read. It does take some concentration and if you hate geometry and such this is probably something you'd prefer to skip. While I don't pretend to understand most of it, I did catch a bit and hope to crochet one of these interesting characters at some point. It had detailed instructions on how to crochet a hyperbolic plane. Someone at Eons also posted this link, at the University of Florida, to more patterns.

Just to let you know what you're in for - a hyperbolic plane has constant negative curvature. What is curvature? Good question. I can only explain it by example. A straight line or flat surface has zero curvature. Circles have constant curvature because they are curved everywhere in the same way. Curving outward is positive curvature - like an egg or a hill. A valley would be negative curvature. So if a surface has constant positive curvature it is a sphere.

To put this into practical use, if you made a crocheted pentagon and you surrounded it with crocheted hexagons (laying them side by side with no space between them), you would not be able to lay them flat. They will eventually form a sphere - a soccer ball is the example used in the book. The premise is that a surface with constant positive curvature will not be able to lie flat but will, in fact, close in on itself eventually, thus becoming a sphere or circle.

The book had examples of where this concept is found in nature and different ways to use it in crochet. I found it fascinating.

The Institute for Figuring is another site that I've mentioned before with more crocheted examples. 

If you're interested in this topic, I suggest you get the above book and do some research online, google hyperbolic plane + crochet, for example.

I don't know if I mentioned here before but I decided against making the Sweetheart Ripple Afghan in Reversible Ripple Afghans for the time being. I may do it later but am not doing the crochet-along. It's just a matter of time and priorities.

You might remember that this Sweetheart Ripple is the afghan by Kim Guzman. If you ARE working that sweetheart ripple afghan, do go have a look at the video demonstrating the special stitch. I thought it looked to be very helpful.


Happy crocheting!
Sandie