These are just newborn booties so there is not a real nice toe section. Most of what I have found for newborns is like that unless it is regular crocheted booties. So I guess I will have to sit and play to get some thing different then these as I am not really fond of this look but they will work.

As you can see these are not finished off yet. The top one is from the pattern for a crochenit set of booties done in the basic stitch, but these were converted to the Tunisian simple stitch. Once the have been sewn they won't look so tall. I amazed myself with this set in that the colors at the bottom and top are very, very close to the same.

The bootie on the bottom that is pink and yellow is done in a two shell return with a pickup of stitches in the return row chain. The scan doesn't show it well but the top has a cuff that turns down. This will be permanent when the bootie is sewn.

The last bootie is one I just completed. Again I used the two shell stitch return but on the pickup row I did a double crochet front post stitch on the row before between the two shell stitches. I need to frog the last row for the cast off as it came out too tight. It would be too much work getting a baby foot into the tiny hole that will be left when the backside is sewn.

I am sorry that I cannot get it to scan better then this but I got so lazy about getting out the camera. Maybe later for that.

Cro-hooked baby ghan

I'll be darned if my daughter didn't take one little glance at the cro-hooked baby afghan I am making her and instantly said "I don't like it". I could hardly believe I was hearing that. I was shocked. Last time around I didn't make her a bunch of baby things as it was summertime when Mason was born. Not a lot of call for warm yarn type of projects. So this time since there will be some cooler weather still hanging around I thought, well. She was upset the last time because I didn't do a lot of crochet baby ghans.

Well, all I said was "figures", then she starts to decide that maybe it might be ok, but that did it for me. I will finish this piece cause I like it. I think it is beautiful and I will complete it, but I will not give it to her. I don't give things to people who say "I don't like it". There is always someone who will like it. Still I am a bit bummed about it. This is the child who still has her Barbies with their crocheted dresses I made them, and her cabbage patch clothes.

Well, maybe the colors hit her wrong, but I didn't bother to ask about it. It was not something I wanted further discussion on. Maybe there just won't be any crochet for the baby. I can do store bought just like anyone else and save my hard working on crochet for those who really want it.

I had joined another exchange. This time we were not doing squares. I still have squares I am working on from the last two exchanges. For the 6" squares I am edging them in red before attaching them. Since I do so many other things this is a long time project. I only do a square or two every few months. Like last night, I edged two squares and then put the project away. I really need to work on this more. The picture of the square here is one of my favorite square patterns. It is so beautiful. There are a few others that I love also, but this one is the neatest.
NOTE: Square is from an online free pattern by Bonnie Pierce. She did an excellent job designing this one.
Pin Wheel Star *See note at the bottom of this post

My other squares project is 12" squares done in pineapples and butterfly's. I just need to have the time to finish attaching these to each other. Ah time the hardest thing in life to get extra of. The pineapple is by Priscilla Hewitt:
Pineapple *See note at the bottom of this post.

The butterfly square is a derivative of the one done by Chris Simon (with permission and only available by members of the group for this exchange) sorry but the origianl is here: Butterfly Garden Square *See note at the bottom of this post.

Back to the newest exchange. We were doing scarves. We have emailed our partners as to colors and we have to the end of the month to get our projects out. So I have done it to myself again. I have to set aside other pieces to get this done, then I can get back to the things I am working on. I do these exchanges cause they are fun and the group I am a member of is an international one. So our partners can be from the US or elsewheres. My partner for this one is from Canada. Cool. I love getting international partners. You learn such neat things from them about where they live and I love that.
*Links to squares provided for those interested, but as links go right now they are working, later they could be gone.

moved from Loom Knitting

Here is another of those pinwheel squares just to show you how different colors can look. I like the red and white the best but this green and yellow is not all that bad either. Many of these attached would make a very thick warm afghan.

I think I needed a couple of pictures of things to show of past works. These pictures were taken recently but the dresses are getting quite old. They were made back in the 80's for my daughters Barbie.

Since they were for a small child I am suprised at how well this have held up over the years. The white dress with the blue overlay was done with a fingering weight yarn. The cream colored dress was from a size 10 thread. At the time I worked these I thought that I would never use such small yarn or thread again, but I was totally wrong. I have actually tatted with down to size 30 thread and knitted with down to size 20.

Is it knitting or is it tunisian

Tunisian knit stitch, does it really look like knitting or not? Tunisian purl stitch does it match a knitted purl look? If you do a cro-hooked piece with a knit or BAS stitch, does it look like knitted garter stitch?

These questions have been have been asked of some since the time I started to learn to do tunisian crochet. Now one of those questions have repeated itself on groups.

I say that to me they do not look the same. Sorry my opinion folks. The tunisian knit stitch is the only one that actually comes close to the look of a knit stitch, but then again it is only close in how the stitch looks.

I have spent the better part of an evening, minus cooking dinner for hubby, making some swatches to look over these tunisian stitches. Not only did I make the tunisian stitch swatches, I continued by making some knitted swatches. I don't think you can really compare with out doing both.

Earlier I was told that there is an online video where a lady does a cro-hooked stitch that looks like knitting, the garter stitch. Well, I asked where that video is but as groups go answers can be slow in coming. So I searched but couldn't find where that video might be. So I just worked those swatches.

So far I can say that not one swatch looked like garter stitch. Oh no, I have to take that back. One swatch does look like garter stitch, but then it should, it is a knitted garter stitch swatch.

Now understand I am not trying to put down the use of the tunisian knit stitch, TKS, or the tunisian purl stitch, TPS, as I use them both. It's just that if it doesn't look like then I cannot say it does look like, well you know what I mean. It either is or it isn't. For me as I compare it just isn't. That's not to say that I really want it too anyway. For me knitting is knitting and tunisian is tunisian.

I don't really want one to fake the other so well that a difference cannot be seen. That just wouldn't be fair to myself, for you see if the tunisian really faked the knitting to the point of really looking like knitting, then what would be the purpose of learning it. You see I knit. So if I was learning a fake to replace the real then why bother.

I do bother because it is different. I want it to be different. I don't want to learn an entire craft only to have it look and be the same as one I already know. That would be just no fun at all.

So I have my knitting and I have my tunisian (crochet?, well that's another whole story).

PS: I will try to get pictures of swatches tomorrow but I am terrible about remembering to do the picture thing. I do believe that my little cro hooked ghan might just be long enough to get a picture of this beginning baby ghan. So I will try that one also. If pictures don't show up quickly, well that means I became too busy with something along the way.

Tunisian Hooks

A while ago there was hooks put out for tunisian. These I think were modeled off the crochenit hooks that came out long ago. I have one of those first crochenit hooks. Oh I hate it, it is awful. The yarn won't slide, you get so frustrated you want to throw the darn thing.

Now these new hooks people have told me they work much better. Yea sure at the price they have been it is a no go for me. I don't want to waste money on hooks that will be the objects of complete madness to me. So I have avoided purchasing any. I instead purchased some of the Moez hooks. I do so love those Moez hooks. They may not be fancy, but they sure do work nicely. Nice people who make them also.

Ok the point of this posting is that I was browsing ebay yesterday and saw some of these plastic tunisian hooks that are those with the cord at the base. They are meant to be used for larger projects. Now normally I would just pass on by but some people on one of my groups have been talking about these hooks. So I decided to check them out. Wow, the lady selling them had them on a special buy. So for three hooks plus a couple of patterns they were only $4.79US plus $1.75 for shipping. Now I could spend that much on the patterns alone. So I bought them.

We shall see how well they work for I have several things to make for the baby coming to visit next year. I did a buy it now this morning and she has already sent notice they have been shippped. Wow, can you beat that. That is one of the fastest shippings I have ever gotten.

Tunisian or Cro-hooking

I have decided that I want a baby afghan for the upcoming new one, oh did I say another grand was on the way, well it is.

I could loom one, and I will but I do love the look of some of the newer stitches in Tunisian crochet and cro-hooking. So I have been playing a bit with them. I started with a playing with a stitch that I got from a video by Kim doing a Tunisian simple stitch with a twisted knit stitch, but I didn't like it much. At least not for a baby ghan. It just didn't hit that special spot. So then I played with a few more Tunisian stitches and decided to switch to cro-hooking. After all the hook I grabbed is a moez cro-hook that was just hanging around (I do love the moez hooks).

So I jumped over to a tutorial at annies attic for a "crochenit" stitch called the fan stitch. Wow what a mistake. I kept loosing stitches and couldn't figure out why. Something must be wrong with the tutorial as it has you decreasing by six and increasing by five. Just doesn't work.

So I went on to play with a few more stitches and none seemed to be what I wanted. Somewhere, cannot remember where, I had found a stitch that is much like the fan stitch but uses fewer stitches in the shell. So I choose to use a three stitch shell, and a high stitch row to go along with the shell row. I play a bit to see how this would look, with some dark green and light purple yarn (I know not a good combo, but for practice you sure can see whats happening).

After playing a bit I decided that a straight high stitch row wasn't going to do the job I needed, but remembered that on the fan stitch they dropped to the lower row and picked up a stitch there. This is somewhat like doing a raised double crochet. The difference is that you are picking up a loop in the horizontal stitch below and then doing a couple of chains to bring it to height.

So now I have it. I started with a long tail cast on in homespun in a pink color, then changed to a blue for the reverse side color. Now I am doing the pick up row in the high stitch with that drop to the row below, this is centered in between shell stitches. Then the return row is a three chain three shell stitch pattern.

Guess what? I like it. This is so fluffy and will be a beautiful piece when it is done. Sorry I just started this this afternoon. I figured that I had time since I had to sit at the doc's office for a couple of hours. See my son got very sick yesterday and today he was wheezing and gasping for air. Doc says he has pneumonia. Isn't that nice the day after his birthday he gets really really sick.

Crochet

I have loved to crochet for many years. I started because I needed something to help my son break the breast feeding habit he had formed. It worked. I would tell him that I had to crochet and he couldn't climb in my lap. He soon got the idea and if crochet wasn't in my lap he picked it up and put it there. What a little man.

I never realized when I started crocheting that it would become such a big thing, but it did. You could say I was hooked.

So now I am starting a blog about my crochet and we will see how this goes.