Friday, December 18, 2009

What have I been doing lately?

Well, besides getting ready for Christmas...

I've been crocheting! I'm making scarves - 2 for my friend's daughters, and 1 for me!!! :)

I'm working now on figuring out how to make an infinity scarf (some people call it moebius/mobius - I don't know why, and it's hard to explain, so I like infinity scarf). I should finish that today and get a pic. :)

So here's my scarf for me. Yes, you read that correctly. I made something just for me, because I wanted it. I made the same braided design that I did for Hallie's, but this is Tunisian stitch. It's hanging on my coat on the back of my desk chair. I've been getting a lot of compliments on this one. Yes, it's holiday specific, but I think I'll be able to get away with wearing it all winter.


This is also Tunisian stitch - not braided yet - I wanted to make sure my friend likes the colors before I start braiding. I'm going to try to figure out how to secure the plaits without using Stitch Witchery and steam. I don't mind the way it looks, but I'm able to get a more luxe look if it doesn't get flattened.

This is for the older sister - again, this is a color check pic. This one is single crochet - definitely faster than Tunisian! I did these strips while watching the Sing Off earlier this week.

Why do a more time consuming scarf for one sister and not for the other? Well, I'd done a few different strips in Tunisian because I wasn't sure what colors I wanted in my scarf - and the grey and black strips were shorter than the green, tan and red ones, but still the same length as each other. So I was repurposing my mistakes. :)

Here's a close-up of the front of Tunisian (or Afghan) stitch, if you've never seen it before. It works up more slowly than "normal" crochet, and uses more yarn. But it's convenient because you don't have to flip your work. You work one direction picking up stitches and keeping them on the hook (think knitting), then work them off as you come back the other direction. This creates a boxy, thicker fabric. You can see the grid, it would be easy to stitch a design on this.

3 comments:

Cole said...

You've been busy!! The Tunisian stitch is very pretty :)

Tangled Stitch said...

Beautiful scarves to keep you warm at the holidays. Happy holidays, can't wait to see your upcoming projects in the new year!

Anonymous said...

I also do up crochet hats, scarves, and gloves each year. I will have to try the tunisian stitch. The continues scarf also looks interesting. Nice work!