Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Joining in


I have been trying and trying to start a ripple and been having trouble, I just can't get the rhythm. I wish the pattern I was following had a chart, I love the charts. Anyway, came on line for some help and found this blog. So cool.

My Mom crocheted and knitted her way through most winters. When one of her children wanted a new blanket she would give us her crochet pattern book and ask what color we wanted. I can't do it that way, I just can't. Neon orange, my Mom once made a neon orange afghan. So, I asked Adam to pick, from my stash, colors that matched with this material. (There are no neon colors in my stash.) I also asked him to pick a pattern. He choose one that looks like waves which will work well with all the different colors.

I think I am going to switch to the lovely soft wave that so many in the blog have crocheted. Hopefully I can get the rhythm down quickly.
Jessica

Intro and pics

Hi! I'm RC (Colleen) and I'm a rippler..... in fact I've started 2 ripple blankets! I'm using the "Smartie" pattern from 200 Ripples for both. The first is Caron Simply Soft, Brites! 7 colors all together. (only 4 done up so far). The Brites are really brite and happy. It makes me smile each time I take them out. This is marked for my AI duPont children's hospital project. I'm hoping it will make some kid smile!
The next is a smaller ripple done in Cascade Cherub Collection Aran. Only 4 colors for this one, blue, green, yellow and red. Great primary colors that will go with anything. This is actually marked to be the display model for the shop where I "work". I'm hoping to have enough left over to do a knit ripple too. I'm just not sure if I will enjoy the knit ripple as much as the crochet.

Everyone has such great ripples going on! I have really enjoyed looking at all the pictures. Thanks so much for letting me join.

Yes, it's me, your blushing, invisible hostess

SIGH!

What can I tell you my ripplers, no excuses, sometimes life just gets in the way. This past week a 6th birthday weekend complete with middle child meltdown and school-choice snaffu plopped a blogblock the size of Mt Kilimanjaro in my way. At this point, I believe we've completed our ascent and are well on our way careening down hill. The plains are hopefully on the horizon and I'll have more time to spend bopping around here and your sites.

I have, however, had me some un-rippling time:

Yep, those 20 annoying one stitch off on the last repeat so one edge was listing rows are no longer. So, I only have about a foot of ripple once again, but I've done the second foot twice now. Bummer. I'm ready to move forward again, but honestly, I really, really like this repeat and am thinking of making a yarn purchase to move on randomly with just these colors...or not. Am just not sure. So I guess I'll just mull, mull, mull some more.

That doesn't mean I haven't been rippling though:

I spent a good deal of my spare seconds this weekend releasing my stress by trying to figure out how to transform the soft wave into a round pattern. See those sheets of paper? There are similar ones all over my house. And yes, I do in fact mean ALL OVER. After trying and frogging, trying and frogging I took pity on my yarn (not in the picture, it's some gorgeous, shimmery Plymouth Fantasy Naturale in two shades of subtly variegated blues that I imagine turning into a blanket of a puddle-ish sort) and set about to chart it out before trying again. OUCH. It was like one huge undoable calculus problem. Even my hubby culdn't figure out the math for the increases. If I thought my head was going to explode with tension before, it really was now. SO, I took a deep breath and gave up and googled the heck out of every way I could think of to find a soft wave round crochet pattern or stitch. No go. But I did find Beth's great star pattern that I think just may hold the key to setting up the early rows...now that I've tried it out I think it just may work...and the baby gets a new lovey out of some of my scraps as a bonus. (and OK, thanks to Kim-the-enabler, there are now some granny squares too, but more about that elsewhere...)

Stay tuned, more rippling fun to come! Way to go y'all, your stuff looks great. I now want to buy enormous quantities of yarn and make WAY too many blankets. This could keep me going for a very, very long time...

A note to lurkers and want to be invited-ers

I know you're out there, I've seen your comments and gotten your emails! I have, really, really, really. It's just that sometimes you get stuck in my spam filter, and *blush* I'm not always the greatest at getting to it daily. I throw myself and my three kids on your mercy. Have patience with me! Keep them coming, and I promise I will get you invited and your comments posted as soon as is humanly possible for this at home mom.

...and if you are waiting on an invite, please let me know. There are about 15 outstanding/unaccepted invites that have been sent out in the past few weeks. If you're waiting on one, check your spam. It comes from Blogger and it may be lurking. If not, pop me another note and we'll try, try again. :)

Dawn, your ever-loving ripple mistress

Hello - Intro and Yarn!

Hi Everyone - I've really enjoyed seeing your ripple blankets so far, all of them are gorgeous!


I just wanted to pop in and introduce myself, my name is Keri and I blog over here. My yarn is rowan pure wool dk from here.

I ordered 14 balls to start, and I used the duvet cover below as my color inspiration for the blanket. The yarn layout is also inspired by Jane's pretty posings. I did pretty good on the colors, ordering them sight unseen- except for the two random balls at the top. Can you see the bright green and burgundy? What was I thinking!?!?! I think they'll be able to work themselves in somewhere, we'll see how it goes.

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I've started rippling already, ~220 stitches with a 4mm hook is giving me a blanket that almost covers the top of my queen bed. Starting it was the biggest pain, I almost gave up crocheting into the base chain, however after that it's been smooth sailing -er- rippling. Very easy pattern and easy to memorize as well.

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Did I mention I'm a total beginner at this crochet thing? I'm having a lot of fun learning and getting comfortable with it! =)

growing

My ripples are growing, especially after a few days home with my sore little lad. I am concerned that I have used up certain wools and don't have others to introduce. This may mean that it will not be as long as I'd hoped, although at the moment, width wise with the ripples going vertical, it's about as big as a single/twin blanket.

Baby Ripple Progress


So this is day 2 of the baby ripple. I didn't work too hard on it yesturday as a few other WIP had stolen my attention. I also noticed how many PIGS I have ... scary thought! I have a horrible problem starting projects... then getting bored or lose my attention to another project.

I'm really starting to like these colors stacked up next to eachother. It's so different seeing them like this, compared to all for being used at once. Such as in this blanket that I made a few weeks ago. I used the exact same
yarns, and yet for some reason.. the colors look different.

I started thinking today about doing a baby hat to go along with this blanket. I'm thinking of trying to do it in a ripple *of course* similar to the round ripple blankets I've seen a few of you do. I'm thinking I would just stop doing the increases and that should turn it into hat form. Any help with this would be great. Since I'm still a newbie at the ripples, the round pattern may be a bit tricky at first.

A quick question for you all: How many WIP do you have going at once, besides your ripple?

Progress


I've made some progress on my ripple afghan. I have used each color once, and now I intend to repeat the stripe pattern as established 2 or 3 times more. I think if I continue to add colors randomly, the afghan will just look too busy. Besides that, I am really pleased with the stripe pattern I already have.

I did start the next color change, using the rose color again, Monday night. I got to almost the end of the second row, only to discover that I had made a mistake in the row below. So I need to frog almost 2 entire rows! I haven't had the heart to do it yet, but I will try to do it tonight. As we used to say in graduate school, "Nothing to it but to do it"!

Another new Ripple in the pond

Hi, I'm Agate. I've been following the ripple along since it was announced on the CrochetMe blog. I even started my own and I am really liking it, so I decided I'd go ahead and join.

I don't know why, but my pictures won't download. I haven't had a problem on my own blog, so if you wanna see a picture of my ripple right now it is here. I'll try to get it onto here another time. I've already tried twice today.

Most of my yarn is Red Heart acrylic, a couple skeins of Lion Brand Wool-Ease, and yarn from a purchased sweater I ripped apart. It is a mix of reds, browns, burgandys and a couple vareigated yarns. I think the colors are really nice together and a sunny yellow keeps it from being to dark. I didn't buy any new yarn for it, this is entirely from my stash. I am using a K hook.

I am using the lacy chevron pattern from Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet. I had to make one change to it though. The book says to make a 3 stitch turning chain and my sides were becoming warped and tight. I crochet very tight already, so I added a ch to the turning chain and it seems to be working better. It's not a wide blanket and I will probably have to add a border in order to make it a little wider, but that's okay, I tend to lose interest in blankets when I make them, shorter rows might stave that off for awhile.

I do want to finish this one though, I think it will look great on my bed.

Agate

Uglies

since i've vowed to only use yarn that i already had, i'm going through some ugly spots, but i'm not frogging. i'm also afraid that i may run out of yarn. i'll worry about that when i get there.
ripple progress


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Still Rippling


Here's my progress on the ripple blanket I am crocheting for my niece. I'm about to start another block of turquoise and I can't decide if I should do it the same as before or change it.

Someone asked in a previous post if anyone was using a special crochet hook. I'm not using one (I actually lost my Clover Soft Touch! *sob* I loved that hook so much I had to order another one) but I went through a stash of needles I recently inherited from my Great Aunt and Grandmother who were both needleworkers (a knitter and a crocheter, Grammie taught me to crochet when I was a teenager) and found amongst the plastic and aluminum hooks a tiny bone crochet hook and a hand made wooden crochet hook that I think belonged to my Great Grandmother on that side of the family. I want to use one of those hooks to make something after I'm done with this afghan.

P.S. Do knit ripples count too? If so, I am making some rippled squares for one of these in between my crochet ripples!