Tuesday 18 January 2011

Doris Chan

I've just been reading my birthday present, Doris Chan's Amazing Crochet Lace. Great, I've really been enjoying it. I  want to try some of the patterns but its very difficult knowing what English yarn I can use. I do like books that give you alternatives not just one yarn, still that's just a little niggle.

Before I start I need to do some practice on foundation crochet. I tried it once and worked out how to do it but when I tried it the other day for I pattern I'm doing from CrochetMe. (finally got my first issue, I suscribed in May, but that's another story) it didn't work. Doris Chan gives a slightly different method in this book so I must get round to trying....I don't like the preperation, I just want to jump straight in....which leads neatly on to my next point. Tension Samples, more like tension headaches. I have found time after time that no matter how carefully I knit or crochet my swatch the finished garment never comes out the right size. Imagine how pleased I was to read Doris's thoughts on this, she points out that crochet stretches, that there are all sorts of other things which make tension samples redundant. I have found this with my own patterns that I write, so now I don't feel so guilty about my tension samples not even matching my own designs. One amazingly wonderful advantage that crochet has over knitting is that its possible to see within a short time whether your garment is the right size, although this doesn't take stretching into account, but for width rather than length this works well. On one cardigan that I made I ended up doing the first two or three rows of the pattern and measuring this to the schematics. Even doing this a couple of times was better than endless tension headaches. Mind you that stretched like no ones business...sigh..

The picture above is from a free pattern so I hope Doris Chan won't mind me using it. Click here to find the pattern.

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