When I want to take a bit of a break from knitting I pick up my crochet, which is another skill I tried to learn during the first lockdown.
I think the easiest thing to learn to make is the granny square as these can be made any size and can then be stiched together to form many other things.
In my family, my gran was always knitting and my mum usually had a crochet project on the go. Both could do their respective skills whilst chatting or watching TV with the needles or hook moving quick enough to be almost a blur. I am not at that level of skill.
Crochet took me a bit longer to learn as the yarn is held in the non dominant hand which, as an English style knitter, took me a while to get used to.
This is an on going project and so will update as I go.
Making the granny squares:
For these squares I decided on Patons fab DK yarn which is 100% acrylic, machine washable and not overly expensive. The yarn band recommends a 4mm hook but I found a 5mm hook worked better for me. I am using a metal hook from the set I inherited from my mum. This works well with this acrylic yarn but other people my prefer wooden or plastic hooks.
This is an easy project as it involves only 3 stitches, chain stitch, double crochet and the slip stitch.
There are two ways to start a granny square:
Firstly you can either chain a certain number of stitches and then slip stitch into the first chain stich to form a loop. This loop forms the central hole of the finnished square.
The second method is the magic loop. Here you can close the central hole up by pulling on the yarn tail closing up the loop after you have finished the first round.
My personal preference is the first method as I like the cental hole being there.
To see how this is done I found the best tutorial was from Very pink knits - crochet for knitters on youtube.
After this as long as you can chain stitch and do the double crochet (or tripple crochet in UK terms) then you are good to go.
My colour choices:
I have decided to make 4 large granny squares and then stitch them together to form the blanket. Now my colour decision might look better in my mind than in reality but it has been to do two in pastel colours of cream, pale blue and a sort of mint green and two squares in darker colours of navy blue, cherry red and purple. My idea is then to stitch them together so matching squares are diagonally opposite.
The yarn, whilst not my favourite, was ok to work with and it was smooth and did glide easily and was not rough on my fingers. So far in all the balls I have used I have not come across any knots which is a good sign. The colour range is quite varied but do check the dye lot codes as different ones might be a slightly different colour. My hooks do have a bit of a point which makes it easy to get into the gaps and the stitches.
Tip:
We know if a granny square gets large enough it can sort of 'vortex' and pull sort of one way. To avoid this after you chain 3 to start the next round turn the work over so you then sort of work in the opposite direction round the square. This will even out the 'pull' the stitches have which causes it to slightly twist one way if you work the same direction on every round.
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