There are two new stitch tutorials up!  First:

the mirrored chevron

This is NOT the same chevron stitch that appears in our inspirational CAL blanket.  I’ve altered it so it will lie completely flat.  Next up:

surface chains

I’ve seen this recently online but I first found it in an old Better Homes and Gardens book called “Complete Book of Knitting, Crochet & Embroidery.”  It’s a neat stitch that you do after you’ve worked the main fabric and would be a great addition to all sorts of projects!

As you may have guessed, both of these stitches work with our other CAL stitches, and I’m definitely going to use both!  So, to recap, here are the “fancy” stitches that will work for our CAL so far (excluding regular dc and hdc):

• bobble stitch
• catharine wheels
• full star stitch
• granny stripes
• mirrored chevrons
• surface chains
• woven DCs

To reiterate, if you’re participating in the CAL it is up to you which stitches to use for your blanket — you can always replace what you don’t like with regular dcs!  I will be posting exactly what I will be doing next, however, for those of you who want more direction.  I’m honestly not sure about the woven DCs — they look so cool but to be most effective they should be done in one color, and I’m not sure that I want such a thick stripe of one color in my blanket.  You are free to use it if you like, but I think I might pass.  I will have to use it for something else though — it would make a fabulous cushion or perhaps a bag!

So, has anyone been trying out these stitches in preparation for the CAL?  Some of those stitches are tricky.  I’ve practiced lots myself, making all these tutorials!  I hope you guys are as excited as I am — I can’t wait to get started!  My yarn should be in soon.  If you’ve bought some yarn already, you can share it on the Ravelry group page in a discussion thread so we can all see and admire!

OK, I’m done for the night.  Those tutorials and this post have taken a long time!  If you try the new tutorials and find that something doesn’t make sense or I could have done something better, please let me know!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Hi everyone! You may have noticed some appearance changes around here — you know me, I love to change it up!  This look was inspired by this beautiful blog, although I’m trying to change little things so it doesn’t look exactly the same.  As always, the content of this blog/site remains the same. Except, that is, when I add more stuff! Let me introduce to you a new stitch tutorial:

woven double crochets!

This was introduced to me by Carina over at Häkelmonster (thank you Carina)!  She suggested it as an addition to our CAL stitches, and the math totally works out.  Here’s what it looks like:

It looks neater the more you go.  I love the texture!  My light is again poor due to the cave I live in and the fact that I’ve been mostly nocturnal for the past few days just because I can.  For those of you participating in the CAL, I’ll let you decide whether or not to throw this stitch in your blanket.  It does look best in one color, I think, and it takes at least 5 rows to start seeing the pattern take shape, so if you’re wanting smaller stripes of color you might want to pass this one up.  However, this is the only stitch we have so far other than the bobble that has dimension, so that’s a plus!  Here’s what it looks like in multiple colors, just so you can see:

You can still see the textural pattern but it’s a little more difficult.  (And no, my couch isn’t stained, it’s just hard to get the light and color balance right on my phone camera in my living room, haha).  If you test out the pattern either for CAL use or something else, let me know if there are any problems in the pattern.  It’s got some funky stitches that aren’t used too often, and I tried to demonstrate them as clearly as possible, but if you need assistance or something needs to be changed, please let me know!

I hope you enjoy the pattern, and I hope you like the new look!  I tried to find some cute bunting to use instead of the bubbles at the top, but I couldn’t find anything for free and my Photoshop skills aren’t nearly up to snuff.   You may continue to see some edits though.  Anyway, thanks for stopping by today!  Love you guys!