Lamb and Frog

FO Friday

That cracking sound you hear is Hell freezing over. The ‘project that shall not be named’ is finished!

I Should’ve Known Better

It’s not like I wasn’t warned. First, my mom told me the pattern was ‘tedious’…and that was after she had shortened it by four stitches and four rows per block (more on the math later). Then, there was ‘Green Afghan Mojo’ as described by Stephanie in Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter. To summarize: insane amounts of green yarn, lots and lots of blocks, a project that was supposed to have love knit (or in my case crocheted) into every stitch, but a stitch count that causes massive amounts of angst which the creator hopes will not be visited upon the recipient.

Oy vey!

I started crocheting this project before the baby was born (in February). Indeed, I started this project before I started knitting (roughly September 2006). I finished on Thursday, August 23rd. That’s almost a year in the making…for a crochet project…for a baby project. Oy vey!

The Specs

It took me six balls (about 34 ounces and 2586 yards) of Bernat ‘Baby Coordinates’ in ‘Iced Mint’. At three feet per yard, that’s almost a mile and a half of yarn! Oh…and I didn’t do the fourth round of edging (more on that later).

The base chain was 158 stitches. Each row was 154 stitches (double-, not single crochet). There were 165 rows. That’s 25,568 stitches…without the edging. The first two rounds had another 1464 stitches (that’s 27,032 stitches). I don’t know how many stitches the third round had (and the pattern doesn’t say). I had ‘issues’ with the edging. I finished three of the four rounds. Round 4, which put picots on top of Round 3’s shells wasn’t looking right and I made an executive decision that the blanket looked finished without them and, therefore, was finished.

Gauge?

The pattern called for 32 ounces (3200 yards) and a size F (4 mm) hook for finished dimensions of 33.5 inches by 46.5 inches. I used sport weight yarn (as required), so I don’t know how I used more ounces, but less yards than were called for in the pattern…go figure. I used a size F hook that was 3.75 mm…I’m becoming a big fan of the metric system (American needle/hook designations make no sense whatsoever). Even with the slightly smaller hook, I was still over gauge (but I didn’t want to use an even smaller hook because I thought I might go blind). My finished blanket measures 38 inches by 56.6 inches (that’s the unfinished blanket on my king-size bed…just to give it some scale).

Thanks, Mom.

I frogged the base chain and the first row four times before I realized the pattern had an error. Chain 158, then double crochet in fourth chain from hook does not leave 156 stitches…it leaves 154 stitches. 154 is a multiple of 14…each block is 14 stitches by 14 rows…why I didn’t do the math right away is still a mystery to me. Anyway, I asked my mom why she didn’t mention this error when she gave me this ‘tedious’ pattern. Her reply? “Oh…I didn’t do a 14 x 14 block, I did 10 x 10…it was a big enough blanket without all those extra stitches.” Thanks, mom.

When All Else Fails, Follow the Directions

I finished all the row repeats (25K+ stitches’ worth) and the first round of edging. I mentioned the ‘issues’ and using ‘tools and math’ to solve them, but to summarize…Round 1 was supposed to be ‘evenly spaced’ single crochets around the blanket. After frogging side two a couple of times, I finally got smart and used safety pins to mark every 20 stitches and the middle of the long edge (the short edges were pretty much stitch-for-stitch). Round 2 wasn’t working for me at the corners…not even on Thursday, August 23rd.

Then I remembered…when all else fails, follow the instructions. Given that I had already found one grievous error at the beginning of this pattern the hard way, I was having a mental block about the way the corners didn’t seem symmetrical and didn’t seem to be doing what they should (if you crochet…you’ll understand). They weren’t centered properly on the corners. I decided to follow a better set of instructions…King James Bible Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” This is one of my favorite proverbs because I routinely am guilty of trusting my own intellect way too much (see ‘Last Sock in the Nerd Hamper’ by Buns of Strudel). In any case, the Lord said quit trying to figure it out and just follow the freakin’ instructions! I did…it worked. I still didn’t like the final round of picot edging. I called it a project and I’m going to mail it to its intended recipient in time to keep her toasty warm this winter.

Oh yeah…

I finished the teeny tiny baby socks too.