A new technique - Tunisian Simple Entrelac

I'm always trying out new crochet techniques. It's one of my favorite things. And last week I decided to have a go at Tunisian Simple Entrelac stitch. There is a written description and a chart in my favorite crochet bible: The Complete Photo Guide to Crochet by Margaret Hubert I am usually pretty good at reading written patterns and charts don't freak me out either but this stitch had me totally flummoxed. After an hour or so of trying to figure it out I went to google for a video. Mikey of the Crochet Crowd has a extremely good one on this technique: How to Tunsian Crochet - Entrelac Blankets in Rows and this did the trick. I was once more diving into my donated yarn stash and here's my rather seasonal charity blanket. It's all about the pumpkins right now in Texas.

I found making these cute little textured squares incredibly absorbing. I've had a little go at Tunisian before but I didn't fall in love with the technique. It was one of the required swatches when I took my second Craft Yarn Council certificate back in late 2014/early 2015. I recall taking the longest time to figure out what to do with the edges of my swatch. I'm not quite sure what I was doing. I just wasn't happy and ripped it out half a dozen times. I did like the texture of the completed swatch a lot though when I finally got there.

Three things that I now know about Tunisian Simple Entrelac stitch are:

• You can use a standard crochet hook rather than a Tunisian hook for entrelac since you only have at most 7 loops on your hook (well for a six stitch wide square).
• You must chain the number of stitches you want for the whole width of your blanket before you get started.
• You use a crochet hook two sizes larger for Tunisian crochet than a standard crochet hook because the resulting fabric is extremely dense.

There is an amazingly gorgeous top I might try now I that have mastered entrelac technique: Yoga Top by Elena Fedotova  Take a look at it. I'm sure you may well be tempted too!

Butterfly Garden Cocoon Shrug

My latest creation has been much admired so with my children as photographer and stylist ("Don't smile with your mouth open mum!") here are a few photos of my holiday project: the Butterfly Garden Cocoon Shrug.

My inspiration for the construction is the granny cocoon shrug by Maria Valles which went viral on Pinterest in 2015. I've had it pinned on my "Crochet Tops" Pinterest board for a while.  My last granny square shrug worked out wonderfully, see it on this post if you scroll down a little way. My butterfly garden project kept me busy over the holidays, travelling to France to see our family for 10 days. I had a large quantity of alpaca yarn (Cascade Alpaca Lana D'Oro) purchased in the final sale at the store where I work. I needed a delicate pattern to balance the dark green so found a wonderful butterfly garden square in one of my favorite books: The Granny Square Book by legendary crochet great Margaret Hubert.

The construction is blissfully simple. It's just a square joined under the arms with a little bit of edging. After following the 10 rounds of the butterfly garden pattern I just kept going until I could drape my square across my shoulders down to my wrists. I seamed under the arms with a single crochet and added treble rounds to armholes and neckline. It's easy to pull on and snuggle into - perfect for January in Texas.

Maria Valles provides step by step instructions for the granny cocoon shrug on her blog. There is also a video tutorial by Nadia Fuad of Yarnutopia. Some people learn best by watching rather than reading. What's stopping you?

It's all about the joining

My crochet group are off to a great start with the granny squares for our third charity project. I have just finished joining and edging the first baby blanket. Another member of our group has put together a second. I know this because she sent me a photo of her edging this week. It is marvelously elaborate and taken from a Japanese book of granny squares which has no English instructions in it whatsoever. Imagine that - just photos and charts. My edge is single crochet followed by crab stitch (reverse single crochet) and viola here it is pre-blocking.

My theory is that the beauty of the granny square blanket is all about the join. I have chosen a wonderful technique taken from one of my all time favorite books: Connect the Shapes crochet motifs by Edie Eckman. It's a join as you go continuous final round with a flat slip stitch connecting in the adjoining seam and best of all it's incredibly inconspicuous. I enjoy doing it. I never thought I'd say that about joining squares. There is an ever so cute flower in the corner of each join. It's fantastic.

I can date my obsession with granny squares back to two books I received for Christmas a few years ago: Crochet Motifs by Edie Eckman and The Granny Square book by Margaret Hubert. I also had a voucher for yarn that year so I remember buying Cascade 220 in a dozen odd non-matching colors and making huge numbers motifs from the books (there are 219 patterns in total). Looking back now I find this behavior slightly insane because the colors don't match and the sizes vary massively and they have been added to my large bag of "random crochet pieces to make into an amazing freeform creation one day." I wonder if anyone else out there has a bag like this?

Anyway I am happy to report that the group are really enjoying the granny squares mainly because they work up so quickly. One thing we are finding is that the size of the granny squares varies massively depending on each individual's tension so we are combatting this to a small extent by changing the hook size up or down. We cannot readily alter stitches or rows with granny squares as we did with the single crochet squares of our first project. So we are sorting our squares into different size piles at the pre-join stage. It's all fun!