I taught myself to crochet over the Spring break. Huzzah! The goal is to make pretty lace things, i.e. doilies. I have no trouble with single, double, and treble crochet, so I'm good to go with the basic stitches. I just need to figure out the proper techniques for joining circles and so forth. Then I think I'll be good to go. The patterns are like reading gibberish, but I'm sure that will come in time just like the knitting patterns did. I made a stitch sampler dishcloth (or at least that's what I'm calling it) with the three basic stitches in it. I don't have it on me, so instead I'll post a picture of the cat mat I'm making out of single crochet. It looks much better in person.
Have I mentioned that crochet is satisfyingly fast? No? Well it is. My little attention span appreciates it.
When I went to the craft store to pick up some size 10 and 20 crochet thread, I also got me a set of these:
That's the next fun thing to teach myself. The resources out there for tatting are a little more sparse than... say... those for knitting or crochet. We'll see.
Let us go a little more obscure. After I figure out tatting (and doilies... and somehow acquire money), I want to learn a few tricks with these (which I need to order about a zillion of, it seems):
In my mind, bobbin lace is the epitome of lace. I hear that it's not as difficult as it looks. My fingers are crossed, my thumbs are pressed, and I'm spitting between the digits that are left. We shall see one day.
Monday, March 23, 2009
"Hooker" is a Dirty Word
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7 comments:
um yeah with you on the tatting.... but you're gonna do the bobbin lace thing ALL ON YOUR OWN!
as to joining crochet into a circle -- use a slip stitich -- basically you insert the hook under the loops where you want to join, grab the yarn and pull it through -- voila, slip stitch join
easy peasy, especially for a smart lambie like you
It sounds weird, but 2 color tatting is slightly easier than plain tatting!
in tatting, you make a loop (knot) arround the base thread and then pull to 'seat' the knot.
its hard to see this at first.
but if you have a base thread of yellow, and a bobbin thread of gold, you can see the stitches (gold) and you can see how they hide the base thread (yellow)
I can tat.. but not fast or very good.. (and i like pearl cotton for tatting its way bigger than traditional (sewing thread weight!) cotton--but its still fine enough to look lacy.
Tatting is on my list of things to do...not in any hurry but one of these days.
Good luck with that though!
good luck with the tatting - that's one thing I never started:)) not to worry about the gazillions of bobbins though - if you start with lace done like "ribbons" and attached by pulling loops through existing ones - you can do nice and quite large things with only 6-8 bobbin pairs! I wasn't good at maths in school, but my maths teacher always told us: not being able to learn usually means not really wanting to learn! he was right - in hindsight:)) happy crocheting from Bettina (aka dyeinggirl)
i've done a little work with bobbin lace, its pretty cool stuff. like a lot of knitting techniques i found it to be very complex, but not actually difficult.
If you have trouble getting the hang of the shuttle with tatting you might try it on a needle first. I was having trouble, tried the needle and had an ah ha moment and it all made sense. You sound very ambitious, there just isn't enough years to do everything is there?
I was going to say the same as Bettina, bobbin lace is not as complicated as many people think. WE have tatters and bobbin lacers on the Stitchin Fingers group- pop over and have a look sometime
this is where we are
http://stitchinfingers.ning.com/group/lacemakers
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