An Aussie Rippler

Making crocheted ripple rugs runs in my family. My Oma made them, as does my mum. I own two ripple rugs which mum made, but I'd never made one until now.



I am travelling up for my nephew Hugo's first birthday on May 15, and at the last moment at lunchtime on Thursday 3 May I decided to make him a baby ripple blankie - not too big, not too small, not too heavy, easy to drag around for him and easy to wash for his parents. Unfortunately acrylic was my only choice for yarn, since there isn't that much variety at Lincraft, but I did choose the Patons Tasman 9 ply acrylic so the quality was there at least. I'm using a 4.5 mm hook.



I started the rug at 7.30 pm that night It has been so much fun over the last few days seeing how the rug develops with all the different colours.



I chose 11 different skeins. And it is actually soft! Never having crocheted with acrylic before I was little worried, but at least this rug can be usable and also fully washable.

By day 5 it is starting to look good.

The end came into view all too soon

I have finished my ripple. It is now big enough to cover my entire queen-size bed. The only bit of planning that went into it is that the first and last stripes are the same color. And just in time for the temps to reach into the mid-80s here in DC!

And yet. And yet...I still have four separate stashes of yarn. Granted, most of it is not the right size for the ripple, and a bunch of it is actually meant for weaving, but seriously, I had no idea that I had this much stuff left over.

And although I will miss the ripple, I still have many other projects to take up my time.

So close, and yet...

When I started this ripple I was doing two, three, sometimes even four colors each day (meaning four, six, or eight rows). I couldn't wait to get home and ripple. And now? Well, now that I'm visibly nearing the finish line I find myself finding other things to do besides the ripple. I've even done the dishes.

I figure I've got about 16 more colors to go. At one a day, that's still more than two weeks!


And that's my weaving project in the background. Towels ... which I only started when it became clear that the ripple wasn't going to last forever.

Is it esthetically pleasing? I'll leave that for others to decide. My only criterion was that each new color should go with the previous one in some way. So there's a flow, from bottom to top. Whether it works as an overall piece, I don't know. I do know, however, that my stash is substantially diminished. But it should sustain me to the bitter end.

Inching toward the finish line

I can tell that I'm going to go through a grieving period when my ripple is done. It'll be a sad, sad day.

Almost halfway done, I think

My ripple now extends just about halfway up my queen-size bed. And when I put it over me to crochet a new row it reaches just about to my ankles. I'll get full coverage about the time it becomes unbearably hot here in DC. What great timing! I'm starting to get a little concerned about color variety, but I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

Oh, the lovely

I have a deep and probably unhealthy love for my ripple. My husband and I have a cabin in West Virginia, which is where I keep most of my scrap yarn. I wasn't expecting much when I opened the bin, but oh boy have I found the mother lode. It's a full-to-bursting bin of fun colors. Woo-hoo!

The ripple now goes about a third of the way up my queen-size bed.

Greetings from DC

My hands are claws. I'm running out of color options. And I just can't stop rippling.

Here we are after day 1:

And a day or two later:

And finally last night:

I've used a boatload of Red Heart, one stripe of worsted weight cotton, some Lamb's Pride wool, and that last purple stripe on the left is a big fluffy boucle that was a pain to ripple with but which I love the feel of.

It's 300 stitches across, and each stripe takes about an hour. But it's now big enough to fit over me! It's keeping me warm ... woo-hoo!

I've been trying to make sure that each stripe fits, colorwise, with the one before. I've found that trying to plan the colors is impossible. The color I think I'm going to use next inevitably gets put aside for some other inspiration that hits at the last minute.

I love the ripple. And I love seeing everyone else's ripples! I still think everybody else has better colors than me.

I'm in trouble too

I've never actually done a ripple before now, so I had no idea just how damn addictive it can be. Last night the very first thing I did after I came home was paw through the stash. I think everyone else's colors are WAY better than mine -- see below for 21 flavors of fug. I'm hoping I can pull it off though. I do have a whole other stash that I will be looking at this weekend. I chained 303 and did three rows in three colors last night. And then I dreamed in ripples. This is bad.