April 2015 – The Crochet Architect

April 23, 2015

Crochet a Shawl for Less Than $5!

Are you looking for a crochet project that won’t break your bank? I have just the thing for you. Here’s my “Keepsake Lace Shawl” that was originally published in the May/June 2010 issue of Crochet Today magazine. The pattern is available for FREE through the Coats & Clark archives here:

In the past 3 weeks, I’ve crocheted 2 of these shawls with just one skein of yarn each from Michaels! The yarn is called “Loops & Threads Woolike”. It is a light fingering weight yarn with 678 yards in the skein, made with 85% acrylic and 15% nylon fibers. And the best part is it retails for just $2.99! Yes, you heard me right. You’ll get 678 yards for just $2.99 (plus tax)!!! Now that’s a great deal for yarn!

Here is one of the shawls I crocheted last week. It’s for my Mom for Mother’s Day:

Mom's Keepsake Lace Shawl front — Mom’s Keepsake Lace Shawl front

Mom's Keepsake Lace Shawl back — Mom’s Keepsake Lace Shawl back

To read more about this shawl, you can see my Ravlery project page here. If you’re looking for a relatively quick, inexpensive shawl to crochet, you might want to consider this shawl and yarn!

The original pattern is for a 60″ long shawl. This shawl is about 42″ long with 9 pattern repeats across. I started with a foundation chain of 251 chains so I wouldn’t run out of yarn (I knew I wouldn’t have enough yarn to make it the full length and I didn’t want to go buy more yarn). I think the length is very nice! This color of yarn is called “beige” and the other shawl I made was with the color “mauve” (which is much more like burgundy).

I really like this yarn AND the amount of yards you get for only $2.99 (or less with a 40% off coupon)! If you don’t have a Michaels store near you, you can always order this yarn through their website here!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at this crochet shawl pattern and this wonderful yarn!

Happy crocheting,

Susan

April 16, 2015

Free Lacy Granny Scarf pattern

I’d like to share a new FREE pattern with you. It’s called “Lacy Granny Scarf”. The pattern is available on the Red Heart UK website here.

I designed this scarf about 4 months ago for Red Heart using their Red Heart “Precious” yarn, available in the UK. This yarn is a #1 weight yarn, made with 80% acrylic and 20% mohair fibers. I really enjoyed using this yarn and the scarf blocked up very nicely! As with any mohair yarn, you need to be careful with your stitches because ripping out can be a “challenge”!

The scarf measures 6″ wide x 60″ long and is made with 10 motifs, each measuring 6″ square. The motifs are joined as you go, so there is no sewing required. There is a simple single crochet edging worked around the joined motifs to give the edges some stability.

Since this pattern is published in the UK, some of the crochet terms are different in the pattern than the crochet terms we use here in the US. Here are the different terms used in this pattern:

UK “dc” = US “sc”

UK “tr” = US “dc”

UK “dtr” = US “tr”

It can sometimes be hard to wrap your head around the different crochet terms used in another country in a crochet pattern! I’ve rewritten patterns from the UK before with the US crochet terms in them to help myself remember which stitch to work when I’m making something from one of these patterns! And sometimes I draw a symbol crochet chart instead of using the written crochet pattern. I do whatever it takes to understand the pattern in order to make the project accurately!

If you love lacy crochet projects, I hope you’ll give this pretty Lacy Granny Scarf a try.

Happy crocheting,

Susan

April 4, 2015January 7, 2021

Dyeing Yarn for the First Time!

Last year, before Easter, I was reading some posts in some Ravelry groups about dyeing yarn with Easter egg dyes and Kool-Aid. So I thought I’d give it a try. What did I have to lose? Absolutely nothing! And I figured it would be a lot of fun, which it was! I’d like to tell you about my yarn dyeing experience, in hopes that you’ll give it a try, too.

Before starting, I read all the information I could get from library books, Ravelry groups and various websites, some of which were:

http://www.dyeyouryarn.com/easter-egg-dye.html

http://www.dyeyouryarn.com/Kool-Aid-dyeing.html

http://www.examiner.com/list/dyeing-yarn-with-easter-egg-coloring?cid=db_articles

Everything I read said to purchase the Easter egg dyeing kits AFTER Easter, when they are discounted. I waited patiently for Easter to come, so I could visit my local stores and buy the kits for pennies on the dollar! But I had to make sure I didn’t wait too long because they might be all gone (either sold out or shipped back to clear the shelves for new merchandise). I went to the store the day after Easter to buy my first batch of dyes and I bought more on subsequent days, as well. I bought several different kinds of kits with different numbers of dye tablets in them from several different manufacturers. I didn’t need all the bells and whistles in the fancy kits, so I bought the more generic kits instead, which were also less expensive. The kits I bought the week after Easter were 50% off and the ones I bought the following week were 75% off, so it was well worth the wait!

Approximately 2 months after Easter, I was finally ready to begin my yarn dyeing experience! If you’d like to ready about how I dyed this yarn and learn how to dye yarn with Easter egg dyes, check out my tutorial here. Because of the length of this tutorial/story, I have made it into a PDF file to download and read at your convenience.

I designed a crocheted scarf and a knitted scarf with my newly dyed yarn last year, but I’m not quite ready to publish them yet. Since I’m a perfectionist, I hate to rush into publishing patterns that haven’t been checked thoroughly because it’s too easy for mistakes to creep in. And it’s not fair to you to find mistakes in my patterns, which leads to frustration (believe me, I know how frustrating it is to try to crochet something from a pattern with mistakes!). I’ll let you know when the 2 scarf patterns are available for purchase. The crochet and knit scarves are both done in the mosaic technique, which is a technique that I LOVE!!! I used a solid color of yarn along with the dyed yarn because I hate color pooling with multi-colored yarn! The solid color eliminated any possibility of color pooling and the scarves turned out great!

I hope you enjoy my new tutorial on dyeing yarn.

Have a blessed Easter with your family and friends.

Happy crocheting,

Susan

P.S. I’d like to apologize for not posting free crochet patterns on the last 5 days of March, like I had promised at the beginning of the month to celebrate National Crochet Month. I had a death in my family (my brother passed away at 59 years young from stage 4 brain cancer that was originally thought to be a benign tumor). But I hope you’ve enjoyed the 26 free crochet patterns that I was able to post during the month. There are some really talented crochet designers out there!