Hurricane Ripple

Haven't posted to this blog in a LONG time. I call this blanket the Hurrican Blanket because I did almost all of it while evacuated to my parents house during Hurricane Ike.

At first I didn't really like this blanket all that much. I had a "vision" for it and it didn't really work out the way I had planned. I originally planned to put this on my couch, but one cold night I took it into my bedroom and discovered that I love the way it looks in there.



I didn't plan for it to go with the duvet and shams, it was just a happy coincedence. In fact while I was making the ripple I had totally forgotten that I even had that duvet set. We had recently moved and it was still in a box.

So it's finally starting to really grow on me.
YAY!

Sister's Ripple completed!

I managed to get my sister's Soft Waves Ripple completed in time for Christmas!! Her and the hubby loved it! You can read more about it on my blog.



Yarn: Lion Brand Lion Suede
Hook: Size H

More details on Ravelry.

Rippling Along Nicely

I almost have one repeat of the colors complete! I'm not sure if I like the fuchsia in it. I've decided to leave it in till I add the denim color row and see how it all meshes together. There are smidgens of fuchsia in the print colorway, but the solid look so much brighter. What do you all think of the fuchsia? Leave it or frog it?

Nisa's Ripple Half-Blanket Done!

It's done! I actually fastened off and weaved (wove?) the edges in long ago, but just never got around to posting the pics. I decided not to make a full-size twin blanket because:

1. It was eating up so much yarn that you know, when you go to a yarn store, you can't just buy one skein or one kind of yarn and so I was afraid we'd go bankrupt trying to support my yarn habit. And I still had to make another one for my youngest!
   
2. I had a feeling that my eldest, for whom the blanket was intended, might not quite take to it the way I had wanted her to.
3. I got bored of it. :D

This is how it looks going vertically on the bed. I don't like the way it looks this way, but at least it's long enough so that if she does ever use it, it'll cover a good part of her body.



I was supposed to make another for my youngest, and I did start it, but soon after we found out that she's got a dust mite allergy (among other things) and well, non-machine-washable wool blankets just were not a practical choice for their room. My eldest initially complained of it being too itchy, but now she'll at least keep it on her bed.

Now I have a whole bunch of this yarn left over so I've decided to try my hand at that Larger Than Life bag that's been making a bit of a splash these days.

Anyway, thanks all, it's been fun!

Rippling Away

Woo Hoo! Rippling away on a Christmas gift. Here's an update on the blanket that I'mmaking for my sister. It's currently 60" wide and 11" in length. I seem to be averaging 5" for every 7 rows (1 skein of solid = 4 rows, 1 skein of ombre = 3 rows). So this afghan should finish at about 60" X 60" square. I had debated on frogging it to make it a little narrower so that I could make it a little longer, but I said "Forget that!" *grin*

Here's an inside picture of it:


Here's a picture of in on the back deck hanginf out with a bottle of juice :)

Rippling Again!

Hi folks!
I've read the blog for months and oogled over all the gorgeous ripples that people have been making. I have finally started my ripple. This is not my first, but I haven't made a ripple afghan in ages. So, I got started on my Christmas gifts and here it is so far :)

This is going to be a gift for my sister. The yarn is Lion Brand Suede in the colorways of Waterlillies (color below), Eggplant, Olive, Fushia, and Denim.

The stitch is Soft Waves from 200 Ripples.



I have 2 other ripple afghans in the Chrstimas list, so I had better get my butt in gear and start rippling!

Finally Done!

I started this in February and took a long hiatus, but now it's done! Details on my Blog.

Help, O Humble Ripplers

This is my first crochet project and I learned the stitches from the videos at www.nexstitch.com. I'm practicing swatches using the Soft Waves pattern, but my swatches keep coming out curved. At first I thought it was cause I was using too small of a hook. The top two were done with worsted weight yarn and 4.0mm hook. I then switched to a H8/5.0mm hook for the third swatch, and then to a I9/5.5mm for the bottom swatch. Now, I'm thinking the curve must not just be my gauge, but something else. Is this normal- will it straighten out as I go along? Have any of you had this?

On my way...

A big thank you to everyone that helped me figure out what I was doing wrong on the Soft Waves Pattern. I finally got off to a great start and now I can't put it down!!! I worked about 8 rows in one colorway and it wasn't quite working, so I frogged it all, went to the store and bought all new yarn. Now I'm loving it!

Yarn: An assortment of cotton yarns that includes Sugar'n Cream, Lion Brand Cotton-Ease and Plymouth Jeannee.
Pattern: Soft Wave from Jan Eaton's 200 Ripple Stiches
Hook Size: J

The color inspiration comes largely from Heather Bailey's new line of fabric Freshcut. (Specifically the 3rd colorway) I'm a big fan. :)

Frogged, it's all frogged

Well, this is what it used to look like:
But now it's all gone. All gone.

I found that the queen size width was too much for my large loose stitch compounded by the "textured" effect caused by picking up only the back half of the stitch on every second row. Love the look, but the structure was too weak and stretchy.

So tonight I spent HOURS (I could not believe how long it took!) pulling it all apart. I'll try a smaller ghan with a smaller hook and a tighter stitch. I'm gonna forget the textured stripe too.

Hopefully it'll work out this time.

Its scary, but its a ripple!

Ok, definitely NOT my first choice for colors OR yarn, but....you work with what you've got right? ;) In the meantime, I'll just burn my retinas looking at it :)

This crazy blanket started off with the idea of making a scarf for my husband for Christmas. He's a hawkeye fan, thus the black/white/gold. Tried knitting about 4 different patterns, frogged 4 different scarves, hating them all. Then decided to make it into granny squares, and make a blanket....hated those too. Just didn't look right.

So...balled it all up and stuck it back in the closet until finally one day thought "hmm...might as well use it as a practice ripple" since I still can't make up my mind on what yarn I want to use for my "real" ripple. So I decided to make it into a blanket for my son - who is 2 1/2 and thinks the colors are just fantastic ;)

Its about half done, and when I took the pictures yesterday it was *about* 32" long and 45" wide. Guesstimate ;) I'll have to actually sit down and measure soon.

So that's where I'm at for now! I'll post when its finished.

(red heart acrylic yarn, 5mm hook, softwaves pattern)

Novice Questions

Hi there, I'm new to this blog and new to crochet. I tried to get started on my Soft Waves (from the 200 Ripple Stitch Patterns book) ripple blanket yesterday and I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong. I have a couple of questions...

1. The pattern says that you should start with a foundation chain of 12 + 3 chains. I'm using 195, but I'm not sure if I should count the one on my hook. I don't think that I should, but I just thought I'd ask the experts for clarification.

2. The pattern also says that you should end row 1 with 2dc into the last ch. If my math is correct, you should only have enough chains for this to be the first of [2dc into the next ch] twice. Am I right about this?

I think I'm having trouble starting with the right number of chains. Who knew that it was so hard to count to 195.

Thanks in advance for any helpful hints

For those of you doing soft waves...

I managed to get my hands on a copy of the 200 ripple stich book by Jan Eaton at our local library and copied down the soft waves pattern along with some others. I bought the yarn and got started a couple of nights ago and have been having trouble ever since...

I think I missed a line in the pattern for Row 1 at some point because things aren't lining up right when I get to row 2. AND... the book is now checked out to someone else. I'm hoping that one of you can help fill in what I missed. I'll try to write this in a way that isnt giving away any copyrighted information and hopefully it will be enough to answer my question...

As I have it, in Row 1 you work the dcs, then work the top of the ripple, then the dcs again, then repeat. It doesn't share any information about the [dc tog] for the trough. My thinking is that I left out the part that says to work the trough first. My pattern for Row 2 seems to be correct... starts with the dc, then says to work the trough, dc, then work the top of the wave, and repeat. If I just follow the pattern for Row 2 as if it were Row 1 (and keep repeating the same pattern) will it work?

If you need to you can email me at artsyandi@gmail.com.
Thanks for the help in advance!!!

Ripple Progress

I haven't posted in a long time, and for good reason. I have been making very slow progress. Here it is, in all it's 22 inch glory. I started with a 243 chain which ended up being 64 inches. Standard twin size (completely on accident). So because of this happy accident, I decided that the length should be 87 inches. I'm only 25% done! However, thanks to everyone here and their newly completed ripples, I now have a second wind. My goal is 50% done by the end of May! I won't bore you with any more details, but if interested, here is my post on my blog.

Started my ripple for real!

Well, I was originally planning to work on an afghan in the Susan's Easy Ripple Afghan pattern, but from looking at everyone's photos here on the site of their Soft Waves ripples, I decided the other day to order a copy of Jan Eaton's book (which happened to be on sale at the web site I was browsing at the time). And happily (shockingly) it arrived Saturday, so I got started trying to see if I could do it -- here it is next to my Easy Ripple swatch:



Considering that's only the third bit of crocheting I've ever done (and the largest), and I have recently mastered the advanced technique of "actually reading the pattern all the way through before starting," I was feeling pretty slick about it. So I picked up my "real" yarn (which I got about two weeks ago), put on a DVD and started stitching. I chained 219 (216 +3) for a 150 cm wide 'ghan (at least, according to my swatch; we'll see how reality works out). Fortunately, the swatch served to work out pretty much all the kinks I had with the pattern (once I figured out I stopped coming up short of stitches when I actually did the 2 dc at the end of the row...), and so in six rows of afghan crocheted in front of the TV, no major mistakes. Yet. Yay. :)

There's only one problem...



The colors I picked, which I thought would look so nice ... kinda look like I am crocheting Independence Day bunting. (I also have a skein of violet, but I didn't make it that far today.) Yikes. On the bright side, though (?!), I underestimated how much yarn I am going to need. On the Easy Ripple afghan pattern, it said 36 ounces, which is about what I bought. I have 7 6oz skeins, three of which have good-sized dents in them which make me think I'm only going to get 8 to 10 rows per skein. With my gauge, 2 rows measure 2.5 cm or 1 inch (which is really convenient, may I just note), so that's 87.5 cm/35 inches... aka "way too short." So, I guess I need to buy more yarn. Which will let me choose more colors, since I'm not really scared of the color changes anymore. So, at least I can ditch the "crocheted just for the presidential debates!" look, hopefully.

And one amusing side note: I have bad wrists due to both typing professionally and a bad break on one side a few years ago (plus a bad wrench on the other), and so I can really only do certain things for a limited amount of time before they start being painful. It seems that crochet aggravates my hands differently than knitting, so that means -- if my hands get tired of knitting, I can just start crocheting, and vice versa. Hah. I win! :-)

Oh, and just because he snuck into the photo above, apparently using his supernatural knowledge that, somewhere, a picture was being taken (a picture with NO CATS!) - in case you missed him, my cat, Tiger:

Five down, Four to go!

I just finished the last color of the fifth repeat (these pics were taken earlier in the day, it was so pretty today in Dallas).





My little sisters are spending the weekend with us, so I got my sis that is 11 to hold it so that I could get a total shot.


I'm still thinking I should do nine, but I will need to measure when it hits eight repeats. There is quite a bit of stretch and the heavier it gets the bigger it gets:) So will see.
I feel like I am getting crocheters elbow and wrist, I so don't want to poop out but it does make me realise why I switched to knitting more often than crochet. Anyways here are a few new pics, sorry to bore everyone with the same ripple just bigger...lol

Love seeing everyones ripple!

Hi everyone!

My name is Lynne and I'm also new to this blog... well to blogging in general. Yes, I'm a newbie!

I have also been watching everyone's progress for a few weeks now and love all of the beautiful blankets. You have inspired me to start my very first ripple. :)

The only problem? I'm on a yarn diet. I was not going to buy more yarn until I complete some of my current projects (or those just waiting to be started!) but a friend invited me to go shopping in the States (I live in Canada, near the border) and I found the Caron Simply Soft I see so often on blogs. I haven't been able to find it here. Well, I just had to buy it :)

Specs :

Soft Waves pattern from Jan Eaton
yarn : Caron Simply Soft Brites in Berry, Blue Mint, Limelight, Grape, Mango, Lemonade as well as Iris and Rubine Red (Still Simply Soft but not Brites)
I'm making baby blanket size so I chained 111 (?) to start.

So here was my first go at it :











It looked good at first but then realized it wasn't rippling :





It took me many tries to get it right. I've been a knitter for years and learnt how to crochet, mostly on my own, 2 years ago. I guess I need more practice with reading patterns!





Finally I got it right and it now looks like this :





I've never made such a flashy colourful.. well... anything! I love it!

Newbie

Hello everyone, This is my first post. It is so great to see all of the ripples and to see them grow. So many pretty afghans. Here is my blanket on day 10.



I think I will need to do 9 repeats of the four colours. So I am almost a third of the way done. I am using Red Heart Super Saver, a size I hook and the Soft Ripple pattern and while I love the colours and how it is turning out I really not in love with the yarn. So what is a knitter/crocheter to do? Buy more yarn right? So I have almost enough now for a second ripple in Caron Simply Soft. I'm going to add a few colours to it every time I go to the craft store so that when I'm done with the one I'm working on, I'll be set for a second. Is there anything that I can do when it's done that will soften this yarn? I was thinking that I would try to use softener on it but I've never used this yarn before so I didn't know if it would work?
Anyway, here it is on our bed last week(of course it has grown since then:)

It matches better in person.
Can't wait to see more ripples. Am I the only person that checks this blog a billion times a day?

Ripple are forming!

I've been working on this for about 2 weeks and thought it was time for a post. Here is my blanket so far:

I switched to Caron Simply Soft Brites because of Oiyi's blanket, and I love it! I'm using all 9 colors (Watermelon, Papaya, Mango, Lemonade, Limeade, Blue Mint, Berry Mint, Grape, Rose Violet) and a size H/8 (5mm) hook in the soft waves ripple pattern. I decided to go randomly, but haven't really gotten far enough to see the randomness.

More ramblings can be found here.

Oh dear...Addiction rising.

Hi everyone! This is my second update, and I am still newly in love with crochet and rippling =)

At the moment I’m on my 14th colour or 27th row. I’m absolutely loving working with these lovely yarns, and I’m trying to ignore that red row which is just screaming at me to remove it (which I will not!), lol. I’m trying to average out one colour a day which is going well.

I also managed to snap up some nice yarns at the Knit Happens sale (not much left at all!) which will arrive soonish I hope. I’m already having fun thinking about what to do with my leftovers, I can’t wait to try granny squares and maybe some ripple cushions and etc. They didn’t have any Baby Cashmerino or Rowan left but I did get some others that will fit in well hopefully!

Project Specs –
Pattern: Soft Waves from 200 Ripple Stitch Patterns
Yarn – Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, Jo Sharp Alpaca Silk Georgette, Rowan Cotton Glace
Hook – 4mm
Chains – 219 (double bed size)

PS. And a gratuitous cat shot =P She is loving the rippling action too, just sleeping and hanging out next to me.

On the treasure hunt front, I got my mum rippling too, but she will not post to the blog no matter how much I coax, she’s too shy =P So here’s the start of her ripple cushion (pic taken with permission from her blog) in blues, greens and purples. She also bought a ton of yarn in the sale too so we’ll see what she starts next…neither of us crocheted or knitted much at all before all this madness so it’s funny that we have become so addicted in such a short period of time! I’m sure you know how it is, hehe.

Loving gazing at all your works all day!
Meshell x
http://www.littlemissmeshell.typepad.com