RatCreature's Journal

lokifan prompted: How about crochet - how/why did you get into it? Do you have any new projects on the horizon?

I learned the basics as a little kid from my mother, just like knitting. I think it was during a summer vacation in elementary school when I was bored, maybe because of rainy weather? But tbh I don't really remember in detail. My mother got me some basic cotton yarn and showed me how to crochet pot holders, and then I made some.

I never did anything more complicated for ages (with knitting I at least tried for mittens in addition to a scarf), until I saw some amigurumi online and just tried making a simple one in 2017, this dog and a bit later this penguin, and then I again didn't crochet for several years until you felt like making a neck loop.

I don't do fiber crafts (or any crafts really) in a consistent, regular or perfectioning my skills fashion. Mostly I see something, figure it's vaguely achievable, and then follow instructions, and the end result is usually something vaguely like the intention.

Right now I'm crocheting a bunch of granny squares when I want something to do with my hands that might become a simple lap blanket before the end of the winter. Currently it's almost half finished.

(If you want to prompt me there are still open days.)

Well, the emerging result of me trying to follow this crochet pattern doesn't at all look like the depicted neck loop that is supposed to become crocheted by it. I mean, it's not *entirely* unrelated, kind of like a text input for an AI art neural network and the created picture. Probably due to a similar failure mechanism of missing contextual world/crocheting knowledge too.

OTOH it is loop shaped and could perform a neck scarf function by size, and it's not like the details of the various yarn loops (and their misshapen failures) will be particularly noticeable. Unlike say spreading out something geometrical as a blanket or such. So I guess I'll still have a crocheted neck loop.

I think one of the issues when following crochet patterns as a fairly inexperienced crocheter, even if the thing isn't that complicated seeming, is that just a lot can go wrong when putting a "stitch" in another "stitch" because each of those actually consists of multiple yarn loops/holes, and you get an exponentially growing number of ways to insert the hook into that place that the pattern refers to just as a "stitch". And then everything is just slightly off and doesn't quite work like the pattern intended and it leads to compounding failures.

I made a baby penguin amigurumi from the same book I used for the dog earlier. It is this one on the authors website.

This being my second one, I had an easier time with the basics, but I accidentally bought the black cotton yarn a thickness of 0.5 mm less than the gray and the white, so it would not fit together when I worked according to the pattern and I had to adjust it by trial and error to make the black fit over the white, and it still doesn't look quite right. (I feel really disgruntled at the yarn store, because these were on shelf area all next to each other, seemingly all different colors of the same type of cotton yarn for crocheting, only the black not really it turned out! Next time I'll know to read the fine print *grumble*)

I am not sure I understood the instruction for the feet and the schematic picture that supposedly illustrated it further was wholly incomprehensible to me. I assume it was some sort of crocheting notation, but the book never explained how to read that, even though the intro chapter even explains all basic stitches, like how you make a single crochet stitch (if you're curious, it looks like this). In the end I managed something that looked vaguely feet like, and I left it at that. I also did not use two types of gray and I didn't have a wire brush to comb the surface fluffy and frizzly, but IMO my penguin still looks cute.

( pictures of my result )

Crocheting an amigurumi dog turned out harder than I thought, even though I picked a pattern labeled "easy" in the instruction book I used. It does only use simple stitches, but you have to count stitches a *lot*. I lost my place several times and had to unravel stuff, even though I used a marker ring. And the whole thing took a lot longer than I expected.

But I got to a dog in the end that mostly looks like on the pictures. (It is this dog on the author's website.) I didn't bother adding the tiny barrel.

( pictures of my result )

With the basic stitches, what is "rechts verschränkt" called in English? I know that "rechts" is "knit" and "links" is "purl" in knitting terminology, but how do you name that other difference, i.e. whether you sort of twist the stitch -- a "rechts verschränkt" stitch is one where (assuming right handed knitting) you have the yarn behind the needles and insert the right needle from the right into the stitch when you knit the next, whereas a plain "rechts" is when you insert the needle from the left. "Links verschränkt" meanwhile means that the yarn is in front of the needles and you insert the right needle from the right and behind the loop of yarn on the left needle, whereas plain "links" has you insert the needle from the right too but just through the loop (without that twist). I tried looking up the symbol in English language knitting charts, but it seems the knitting symbols aren't normed internationally. In German patterns usually "rechts" is a black square whereas "rechts verschränkt" is a black diamond shape.