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Sunday 16 October 2011

it's all in the words

I love crochet and knitting and have collected far more patterns than anyone could make up in a number of lifetimes! One of my click of the mouse friends in the US has posted a photo of her crochet and someone has asked her for the pattern.
So why my title 'it's all in the words'?
Let me attempt to explain...


When I knit I work right-handed as this was the way I was taught as a young child. I used to go across the 'backs' from our terraced house to the one opposite where a neighbour showed me how to knit and purl. The needles were short and the wool red. From then on I taught myself over the years, and by my teens was doing Aran patterns. Later I tried Fair Isle and Intarsia. Kaffe Fassett, Rowan patterns.


Crochet was something I discovered in my teens and as most do became good at making 'grannie squares'. However, this time I was self-taught and did everything left-handed. Working my way thro' the various stitches and combinations...


Now there are numerous patterns on the Internet, and this is where confusion arises... abbreviations are many and varied enough in English patterns, try some with US conventions and...??? Suddenly it's a new language especially in crochet...


This is when symbols mean more than words and are much clearer.


Sizing? UK modern is in mm, traditional UK is different and so too the US. 
Size 3mm aka 11 aka? no not at all in the US.
Yarn? double knitting aka worsted; Aran aka fisherman/medium... 

4 comments:

Jan n Jer said...

It can be very confusing! How nice you taught yourself this art! The closest I came to using needles was to crochet!

Sayre said...

So that symbol... 4 double stitches in the same hole? Just guessing. That's close to what I did on my shawl - only I used three double stitches. Then I skipped two holes and did three more. I don't know if that actually has a name but I was just kind of making it up as I went.

joanygee said...

I love crochet because there's only one stitch to drop.
Yes Sara, it's what's called a cluster. The only difference being that here it's a 'treble' stitch, whereas for you it's a 'double'. Have you tried filet crochet?

Sayre said...

No... don't even know what that is! I'm not much for the terminology... I bought a book thinking I could figure out exactly what it was I was doing with my hook but the drawings and explanations were confusing. So I just kind of go along making things up on my own.