Crochet-a-Day Challenge: Day 12

Day 12: Dishcloth Design – Colorwork

 

Pardon the colors here, I am trying to use up scraps! Here is an example of how to use color on a dishcloth or afghan square. The particular method of changing colors I used is called intarsia, which is a method using bobbins.  There are three different ways to do colorwork: intarsia, fair isle (tapestry), and carry along.

Intarsia: With this method you make bobbins for the number of times you will change color so that each section of color has its own bobbin.  In the example above, I had three bobbins. There were two bobbins of the variegated blue/pink and one bobbin of yellow. Each time I needed to change colors, I just picked up the new color where it was left off. You need two bobbins of the surrounding color because on a row, the yellow separates the two sections of variegated color.

Fair Isle/Tapestry: Fair Isle is really a knitting term, but you can use the same technique with crochet. In this method you do not use bobbins. Instead, you carry the color you are not using along in your work. For crochet, you lay the unused yarn on top of the stitches and crochet over them with the working yarn. I find this method difficult to master. It is hard to completely hide the unused yarn and if you pull the yarn too tight, the work bunches up.

Carry along method: Not sure if this has a real name. In this method, you do not crochet over the unused yarn. Instead you leave it hanging, but crochet over it every few stitches to carry it along. This will leave loops along the back of the unused color and therefore this method is not reversible.

I have probably done a very bad job explaining these methods! I encourage you to try some colorwork though because it’s really not as complicated as it sounds. 

Here is another dishcloth/afghan block I made a few months ago; it was a bit more complicated! It involved three bobbins of white, three bobbins of red, and two bobbins of blue.

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Crochet-a-Day Challenge: Day 10

Day 10: Create a hotpad or other kitchen item

Back on track. Up in the left corner you can see I finished my apple coasters! In the right corner is a Spiral Apple Tawashi Scrubber, super fun to make! Finally, a dishcloth using the red and green Drops Ice cotton blend.

Dishcloth

Materials:
ww cotton yarn in two colors (A main, B contrast)
H-hook
Notes: Do not fasten off colors, carry unused color up the side

R1: With A, begin with a chainless row of 23 dc (YouTube: how to do a chainless dc row)
R2: ch 1, turn, sc in first st, (ch 1, sk next st, sc in next st) to end switching to B in last st
R3: ch 1, turn, sc in first st, (dc in skipped st from previous row, sc in next st) to end
R4: ch 1, turn, sc in first st, (ch 1, sk next st, sc in next st) to end switching to A in last st
Continue with this pattern repeating R3 and R4 (alternating colors every two rows) until your piece is almost square. End with R3 in color A.
Last Row: turn, Ch 2 (counts as st), dc in each st across, end off.
(My dishcloth is 22 rows and slightly taller than square)

The result is a reversible spike-stitch design. Make it a hotpad by crocheting two pieces and joining them with an edging. Since my yarn is rather thick, I think I can use mine as a hot pad anyway!

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Crochet-a-Day Challenge: Day 7

Day 7: Dishcloth Design – Texture

 

Remind me to stop making red things! Red is impossible to photograph well. Here is my textured dishcloth. Front post double crochet (fpdc) and back post double crochet (bpdc) are the easiest way to create texture. My dishcloth is made alternating fpdc and bpdc to create a woven texture.  You can easily make this look like basketweave by alternating every two or three stitches instead of every stitch like I have done.

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Crochet-a-Day Challenge: Day 5

Day 5: Dishcloth Design – Lace

Will update with the pattern for this later!

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