Thursday, May 3, 2007

Late to the Party

Once again, I am late to a party. After finding the Ripple Along the last week or so and being entranced by all the gorgeous ripples, I knew I had to go ahead with the promise to make my son a blanket/'ghan to take to college with him in the fall. So here I am ready to ripple, but stuck as the yarn is still making its way to me. I'll be using Cascade 220 Superwash. I've ordered 17 colors--one 220 yard skein of each. (Thank goodness for the anniversary sale at Webs--more than half is coming from there.)

I have a few questions before I get started and was wondering if you experienced ripplers could help me out?

  1. I've been practicing the Soft Wave pattern and think I *may* have it down with a little fudging at the end of the row. Has anyone else had trouble with the pattern? I've been away from crocheting for ever so long, so maybe I'm missing something in the pattern~~misreading or the like.
  2. How did you go about planning your ripple? I'm a knitter, so I know about swatching for things like sweaters, socks (yeah, right), etc., but am unsure about the process for a blanket. See, I'd like the ripple to be a minimum of 5 feet wide--wide enough that it will hang off the sides a bit on his twin bed, but he's tall--6'2", so I need a l...o....n...g blanket and am already worrying that 3740 yards isn't enough to give me what I need. How can I figure out approximately how many yards I would need to get the size blanket I want?
  3. Random stripe generator or set pattern?

I'm looking forward to being able to start soon, meanwhile I must be happy to knit. You can check out my blog here.

6 comments:

maryse said...

hey jennraye,
1. when doing the softwaves pattern, be sure to stick hook in the very first stitch in a row after the 3 chain stitches. don't skip to the next stitch as you normally would. you shouldn't have to fudge at the end of the row if you do this.

2. as for yardage. you asked me how many yards i needed. each 2 row repeat took 40 yards of DK weight yarn. each row is 60 inches wide. to give you an idea, my blanket which is 5 feet square (a little short for you) took probably about 2120 yards. based on that, i think you'll have enough yarn. as long as cascade 220 doesn't lie ;) which i doubt it does.

and in crochet, you swatch just as you would in knitting. crochet a good size square. measure it. and then frog it and measure the amount of yarn you used for that size square (or two row swatch).

finally, i used neither a set pattern or the stripe generator. i just picked as i went along, just making sure that i didn't repeat a color sequence. i wanted to mix it up.

renee said...

I have to agree with just picking colors as you go along. It makes the project more fun because it's sort of a surprise to see how each different color makes the blanket look different. Beware, it also makes the project harder to put down.

Stephanie said...

The good thing about randomly picking your colors is that if you do in fact run out of yarn in the end, you could always go buy more.

Anina said...

Hi
1. You shouldn't have to fudge. I'm not sure which pattern you're using, but I'm using SusanB's and it's perfect:
home.att.net/~susanBinKC/patterns/ripple.html.

2. To decide on a pattern, this stripe generator works really well:
www.kissyourshadow.com/stripe_maker.php

Good luck and have fun!!!

Michelle said...

I see that you posted again and you figured out how much yarn you need(yeah I love it when my math ends up right) I to had problems with the soft waves pattern(along with quite a few others) so I sat and wrote out the pattern to try and figure out what was wrong. If you would like I can email you where I think it went wrong, although if you are fudging it you probably figured it out:) Everything that I have read about that books complains about all the incorrect directions. Can't wait to see pics:)

Tackyspoons said...

So what IS the problem with the soft waves pattern?? I'm dying to know. I thought I had it figured out, but apparently I don't. I can't find a web site anywhere with errata for the Jan Eaton book, but it sounds like it's full of problems. :(