Learning to crochet

[DigApony]

So after weeks of watching many tutorials and getting no where, yesterday it clicked after watching about 100 times an American tutorial the woman was brilliant. So I finally feel like I've started to gets to grips with the granny square. Obviously it's a bit messy/loose but it's so fast and enjoyable compared to the knitting I've been doing. But I live in a tiny town and my only option for yarn was some awful stuff which keeps splitting. What would anyone recommend so I can order some from Amazon today?

This is my first try at a granny square feel free to points out my many mistakes I can see I've missed a few stitches.

Try www.ravelry.com there's tens of thousands of patterns and tutorials :)

I taught leart from youtube last year when my dd out grew her favourite blanket. Completely adicted now. I'm currently working on a massive dinosaur blanket for my friend's little girl. Almost finished it!

Excuse the terriable grammer! I taught myself using youtube tutorials last year.

That's brilliant Dobby, looks quite a hard pattern though. Was it?

dobby that is lovely!

All your pictures are fab.

I have just finished hooking this together this evening, need to start the border next.

Not as hard as it looks. Some of the dinosaur centers took a few attempts to get right. But making them into granny squares was really simple but looks really effective. Then the brown is added as a chain round and joined as you go.

I found the dinosaur patterns on a blog called prideoflions but couldn't get on with the method of making blanket squares there. So found a circle to square granny square tutorial.

I made more squares than I need for her blanket so want to make a little pram blanlet and a couple of ribbon blanket out of the extra.

I learned just over a year ago from a Craftsy class. It suits me so much better than knitting. The baby blanket was one of my early projects, done in Stylecraft Special DK, and the shawl is a recent one done in a hand dyed sock yarn.

These are all so beautiful and a bit daunting but saying that I never thought I would ever master the granny square. I'm going to try a sunburst/flower next for one of my squares, can anyone recommend an easy tutorial?

Love that shawl Bitterchocolate

It's called Ilvy by Bernadette Ambergen. It's not anywhere near as difficult as it looks, although it did need proper blocking to make the lacy part look its best. Her patterns always come with a lovely clear chart, which makes life much easier.

One of the things that I particularly love about crochet over knitting is that you can use simple stitches to make a very complicated-looking design (like my shawl). Generally speaking, if a knitted item looks complicated then it bloody well was.

Dig, besides Special DK the other yarns that I have very much enjoyed working with, which are also very reasonably priced, are Drops BabyAlpaca Silk and Drops Merino Extra Fine. Both of them are on sale at the moment on Wool Warehouse. I also love Sublime Cashmere Merino Silk it's more expensive but feels so soft and is lovely to work with.

Marking my place.... Haven't crocheted in a few years but have a baby blanket I want to finish somewhere.... Must go look for it :)

And other websites that I order from (besides Wool Warehouse and Deramores) are Blacksheep wools, their clearance section is always well worth a look, and Love Knitting.

Also you should register on Ravelry, where you can loose hours and hours gazing at the beauty of other people's designs and projects. I also find Ravelry very useful for reviews of yarns. For instance if I see a yarn online and I want to see how the colour changes work, then I can look for projects made with that yarn, and see what sort of comments users have made about working with it.

My first order from wool warehouse came today I was so excited . Had a mixture of drops baby merino and drops merino extra fine which are both super soft that I immediately put in a second order for more. I also went a bit crazy and ordered every colour of alpaca silk . But my plan is to make a super soft blanket for my niece (adopted) to give to on her one year anniversary of going home with my sister in August. She is only just one so will hopefully get lots of use from it .
My original blanket has grown loads I could just sit all day and do this.

You are well on your way to SABLE (Stash Aquired Beyond Life Expectancy). . I'm looking forward to seeing photos of beautiful things.

Bitter I love that it's brilliant. It's getting to the point where I'm hiding it in places I've only been doing it a week today and I have countless balls already but I need want more

You and crochet are clearly made for each other. I used to quilt a lot, so I have SABLE status about three times over in fabric as well as having achieved SABLE status in yarn about six months after learning. We are not even going to mention books (quilting, crochet, gardening and cooking).

Wait until you discover Crochet Alongs. A pattern is released in parts, usually once a fortnight, I'm doing my first one at the moment. It's the Stylecraft Lily Pond. I'm also on the official Facebook Lily Pond group and it's hilarious in the level of whinging and bitching, who would have thought that crochet could be contentious? On the other hand it's really interesting seeing how differently the same pattern can be interpreted, plus people put up photos of the other things that they are working on at the same time so lots of lovely colourful projects to look at.

I'm not on Facebook but it sounds like entertaining viewing . I'm trying to find an easy to follow tutorial for a flower granny square but I'm only getting ones which start with a magic circle which is lost on me.
Right now I would Dom nothing for a day alone, tv, chocolate hobnobs and crochet all day to finish my blanket. But it's out of dh capabilities to take the children out for the day alone, but I live in hope!

Oh yeah, loads of goady fuckers. Fortunately many years on MN has taught me how not to get embroiled. The one that made me properly laugh was the man who came on to say how offensive it was that people were using the term 'ladies' when asking for help. He had a point as it's annoying when people assume a particular gender is associated with a particular career or hobby, but still he was VERY angry considering the lack of any importance really (there are nearly 5,000 people on the group and I've counted ... um... TWO men who are active posters, one of whom is him and that was his only post)

This is the Lily Pond

I prefer magic circle, but it's easy to replace it with a chain start. If the pattern has an open circle in the middle, then halve the number of starting stitches and chain that number and join. So if there are 8 starting stitches in your flower, chain 4 and join to get the starting circle. If you don't want an open circle in the middle, then take off some chains (so work 3 chains for 8 starting stiches). You can also work your starting stitches over the loose end of your yarn and then you can pull the loose end tight before you sew in to close up the gap.

Dig how about this flower square.

Euphemia, you could make your colleague a stash basket. Dead easy. I don't have a pattern as such but if you PM me I'd be happy to explain how to make one. (There is a pattern on Ravelry, but I prefer my own )

We have lots of them round the house - one on my desk (cables, chargers), on in the bathroom (make up, moisturiser), one in DD's room (keys, iPod charger, wallet, etc).

I've found the 4 part bella coco tutorial for a sunburst square so may try that in a bit when the children go to bed.

Thanks for the link bitter I will check it out.

Somive given it a try, was very enjoyable and I'm quite impressed for a first attempt, but... If I want to make it bigger do I continue with what I did the previous round? Is it easy to crochet these squares together with standard granny squares? What do I do?