This post was originally titled "Grannies Go Wild!" since the next squares in the Granny Square Sampler afghan are spirals and "whirligigs", but I ended up wandering off on my own for modifications to the squares that Blair uses.
The spiral one didn't speak much to me, I admit. There is a very similar-looking alternative here that has one more round -- I was also tempted to use the Squaring the Spiral dishcloth pattern instead, but went with the original selection (though I'm sure I'll make a couple of those dishcloths before long!).
The square for week 13 is called the Whirligig, and to be honest it had my head spinning. The look of it in the photo wasn't particularly appealing to me, the inevitable lumpiness of it, I suppose, where the rounds of the contrast color meet. I couldn't understand from the direction in the introduction to "double crochet into the back loop only" how it would produce what I could see in the photo, either -- I have worked this maneuver before, and it makes a sort of little twist or cord running across the tops of the stitches, which is the front loop left clear of the next round. In my travails with the African Flower square, I had seen a video on YouTube featuring a square which had a very attractive line of what I as a knitter think looks just like a vikkel braid! This is, I saw, another result of crocheting through the back post, this time in a continuous line -- it sort of folds over the top of the row, so that the "braid" effect shows on the front, though -- wait for it, crocheters! -- I realized when I tried it that using a second color when working through the back post does turn that chain or "braid" down towards the front but it also leaves the loop that has gone around the back post showing below the braid with a distracting (in my case) blip of contrast color. In another bit of reverse-engineering something that has already been invented, I discovered that if you crochet through what I would call the "purl bump" on the back of a DC stitch, this folds the "braid" down very handsomely with no unattractive blip -- this effect has obviously been long known to crocheters as there are numerous tutorials already out there. It is called "working through the third loop".
But as I was satisfied with what I had already done, I left it at that!
My gold spiral is essentially the Square Spiral Coaster which to my surprise I quite like. The surface crochet is simple and neat, though for an afghan square it is a bit stiff because of the "embroidery". For my grey circles square -- you can see the back in the photo above -- I used the double-crochet square here, with an extra round of the base color so that I could have an odd number of circles, five rounds of the surface crochet instead of four.
Going back to the original pattern and actually working it (!), I realized that, not unlike surface crochet, the contrast color is worked after the background square is completed. It's a little difficult to see because the photo of Beth's original square uses a black yarn as the contrast color, but I think that her contrast line really does lie flat, unlike Blair's in her top photo, which is kind of turned on its side, though maybe this is a result of her squares curling up at the edges more than Beth's.
That wee grey-and-blue square is essentially the original Whirligig without the added-later SCs in front loop, and with alternating colors starting on the third round -- I was going to keep going the full five rounds, but stopped after the third because I liked it that size. I did try the SC-into-front loop, and it certainly did want to turn over on its side, even more so when I tried just slip-stitch, so I pulled it off and just carried on with the back-loop DCs, which makes a perfectly usable square.
Comments