My first crochet projects

my first crocheted afghan

I thought I’d share some of the crocheted projects I’ve finished. There aren’t many – but lately, it seems that if I’m not crocheting, I’m online looking at patterns I’d love to try. Maybe I’ll have to put off learning to knit for a while – that would just compound the problem!!

I’d told my mother for years that I wanted to learn how to crochet and knit, so for Christmas 2005 (has it been that long?!) she gave me a kit for each. That very day, we sat down, and she showed me the basic foundation chain, single crochet (sc) and double crochet (dc). Unlike tatting, which I had tried to learn several years ago, I actually “got” it and was able to remember long enough to start trying. For a while, I just practiced, “frogged” (rip-it, rip-it), and practiced some more. But I’ve never liked practicing much – so after a while, I started to make something of my own design.
What resulted was this afghan, which I gave to my dear friend Lucy for Christmas 2006.

my first crocheted afghan

I used dc stitches for the whole afghan. I started with tan and made my square. Then I changed to green and finally blue, connecting the squares as I went. I continued the pattern of 3 squares until I thought I had a long enough strip (I don’t think I ended with blue – I just stopped with it was long enough). Then I created another strip, but this time starting with blue, tan, and green. And finally a third strip of green, blue, and tan.  Once I had enough strips, I put it all together by using a sc stitch so that one side was neat and the other had a ridge (as seen at the top of the picture). I can’t remember if the edging was sc, dc or two dc’s.

Lucy loved this! Funny enough – it must have been Blanket Christmas because she gave me a tied fleece blanket which I love.

For Christmas 2007, I made my sister a pair of heather grey crocheted mittens.  I lined them with fleece to make them extra warm.

Caron snowflake mittens crochet

At about the same time, I picked up some Red Heart Baby Econo Candy Print (pastel variegated, “neutral” enough colors for girls or boys) that I fell in love with.  This was another made-up pattern of mine. I did two rows of each white and candy print, sc and dc. I didn’t cut off the ends when switching colors, I just carried them along the edge until they were used again (keep it loose!) Edging was very loose sc and dc with multiple stitches in the corners to prevent curling.

crocheted baby blanket

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