Wednesday 27 March 2013

Eggs Again and Latest Crochet

The eggs have been in use all week and I am quite pleased with how they were received. They have mainly been used in the home corner for cooking, and within that there has been some counting, sorting by colour and lots of talk about eggs. 

The eggs being over, the next thing I have been doing is the swatches from my Kindle crochet book. As I showed earlier I started with texture patterns. As I looked through the book I found the lace patterns. I started with some simple ones, and, as usual, followed the written pattern. Although I understand the idea of the visual pattern I had never been able to follow it. I didn't take the time to understand the symbols and thought I preferred the written version. In the written patterns there are often little parts in brackets that describe one combination of stitches you do within another stitch. Add to this the asterisked parts that you repeat and take a pattern with many rows in its repeat, then each row begins to become very long winded. This then makes it hard to see where you are, and on a kindle I can't quickly draw a line to remind me. I got to one row on the pineapple pattern I was trying and got totally confused, so decided to look at the visual pattern to help. It was only then I began to see the beauty of the visual pattern. After a short time I was just using that, and 'reading' it in the way I imagine you read music-almost instantaneous looking and doing. I know this may have been a bit of a lengthy description of something maybe most people find easy and obvious but I was so pleased that I finally understood it. The fact that you see before you what is appearing in yarn just makes so much sense. I am also pleased that I am making progress in my understanding of crochet, as it has never happened with knitting! I will show the swatches I have made soon. I blocked the lace pattern ones last night. I blocked them quite 'aggressively' ( a hilarious use of the word aggressive I felt in my crochet magazine!), that is I stretched them quite a bit. I will unpin them later as they are dry now. I hope your week has been progressing well. Work has been exhausting this week and I cannot wait until the end of tomorrow! Egg hunt and biscuit decorating party to do first though!

7 comments:

Queenie Believe said...

Your eggs are wonderful!!!
I hope your aggressive blocking worked out well :o)
Have a great day.
Always, Queenie

Linda Sue said...

Oh those lucky children- Those eggies are awesome!How satisfying they must be to play with. You are amazing, You get several, many, loads of gold stars!

Rattling On said...

I like visual patterns in crochet and knitting, they sometimes save confusion that a written one can have. But it's nice for new or different stitches to be explained in a glossary as well. Looking forward to seeing your samples!

angvou said...

how unexpectedly beautiful!

Anairam said...

I admire your perseverance and I look forward to seeing those samples. I must say that I cannot follow knitting or crochet patterns. I am obviously not trying hard enough and not challenging myself. The moment I see all those codes, my mind goes blank, and then one thought pops up: "Too difficult, you will just be wasting your time." Sad - because this means I am stuck on granny squares (my own made-up pattern) for crochet and plain and purl for knitting.
The eggs are beautiful. And they have no calories. So that makes them doubly good.

Tracy said...

The eggs are AMAZING, Sarah... what a triumph and fun! Fun to hear--and see"--about your crochet adventures. Hope you & yours had a lovely Easter holiday weekend ((HUGS))

snoopydogknits said...

OH MY GOODNESS! Your eggs are amazing. I just love seeing all those gorgeous colours side by side. happy Hols! Ros