Ribbon Yarn: The Revenge

Apparently ribbon yarn can read. And it knows every bad thing I said about it the other night, and it is out to get me.

Crocheting with the ribbon yarn gets much easier as you get used to it, and though I'd previously wondered if the Yarn Cocktail ladies were actual crocheters, I was actually amazed to see the huge circle transform into a little ruffled one that I was quite taken with. It was kinda like magic.

Now imagine my horror as the little circle kept decreasing... and decreasing... and decreasing...


See that cute little ruffle? See that look on my face? That's because it's way too tight.

I have some ideas on how I might be able to make this work, but unfortunately they're going to involve frogging and I doubt the ribbon yarn's going to like that. Also, they're probably going to involve messing with the pattern, which has the potential to be disastrous. I had a bad feeling about crocheting a hat from the bottom up in the first place.

I have gotten some helpful suggestions for alternate uses:

• garter
• sleeve trim
• Renaissance faire garb

At this point I just want to make something else that is no challenge at all. Maybe I'll work on the baby blanket that's just rows and rows of hdc. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Ribbon yarn and other crochet hazards

This week at the Crochet Liberation Front forum, someone was asking for suggestions on patterns to crochet with ribbon yarn. I've been planning on making the Bay Blue Hat from The Crocheter's Guide to Yarn Cocktails for a while and in fact had bought the Berroco Zen yarn for it just recently, so I decided to bump it up in the queue and report back to the CLF.

Somewhere along the way when I seriously got into crochet and started shopping at yarn stores instead of Michaels, someone must have told me that ribbon yarn was not good for crochet. I say "must" because I don't specifically remember someone saying it, but for quite a while I've had a sense that crocheting with ribbon yarn is something to be avoided at all costs. But the Bay Blue Hat was cute, and only required two hanks. And now I had incentive. So today, I accidentally fed the yarn to a pug, shrieked, retrieved the yarn, and then got started.

Initial impressions of crocheting with ribbon yarn:

• The ribbon yarn is going to twist. I can't imagine a way around it. So I figure either you can put on your thinking cap and waste a lot of valuable crochet yarn, or get used to it.
• The twistiness makes counting your stitches hard, so if you lose count on the base chain, you're screwed.
  
• Foundation chains are even more unpleasant and time-consuming with ribbon yarn. I spent a lot of time wondering if I was even stitching in the right place.
  
• This may just be particular to Berroco Zen, but... here, have a look at the structure:

See how the yarn is constructed, with three threads running lengthwise and all those little ones running between those threads? Yeah. Holy snagging on my crochet hook, Batman. I'm starting to understand why we leave this stuff to the knitters.

All that said, crocheting with the ribbon yarn did get easier as I got used to it, and, perhaps more importantly, as I got past the foundation chain and had distinct stitches to stitch into. Despite an initial suspicion that the ladies behind Yarn Cocktails were just knitters out to get our money, I'm liking how the hat's starting to look. That said: I would not recommend ribbon yarn for process crocheters. If you like the look of the finished object, it may be worth the frustration, but if you mainly crochet for the sensual pleasure of yarn running through your fingers (does that sound dirty? It's not supposed to), I doubt that ribbon yarn has got what you need.

Actual pictures forthcoming at some point. (I've recently learned that half the people who "read" this blog don't actually read, just look at the pictures, so I'm trying to react accordingly. Don't say I never gave you anything.)

I'm not a weaver... where the hell did this tangled web come from?

Last night while drifting off to sleep I thought up the perfect conclusion to the Sooper Secret Project, and luckily I still remembered it this morning. I checked with ST2, who is my go-to person when it comes to "be absolutely honest, does this look stupid?" and now that I've been reassured that it doesn't suck (I am such an approval whore, I need to kick that habit if I want to design) I'm trucking along on it. I should be finished sometime tonight... IF my yarn holds out.

Contrary to popular rumor, crochet doesn't actually use three times as much yarn as knitting; it uses a third more yarn. (Still, it does use more yarn. I have in the past tried to use this fact to convince myself I should be knitting instead, but then I looked at the prices of all those needles you knitters have to have, looked at my hooks, and kept crocheting.) Sock yarn seemed perfect for this project because it came in a nice fat skein, nearly 400 yards worth. Well... the closer you get to the end of the yarn, the faster it goes. Right now I'm doing my edging (probably in way too tight a gauge because I'm trying to stretch the yarn) while eyeballing the remaining yarn trying to figure out how much is left and mentally chewing on my fingernails. (If I did chew my fingernails, then I'd have yet another good reason to crochet: Keeps my fingernails out of the way. Hey, maybe someone should tell Lebron James to crochet on the bench instead of chewing his nails.)

To add insult to injury, somewhere along the way the remaining yarn got knotted. So I've spent an hour and a half of what should have been crochet time trying to untangle my yarn. Normally when stuff like this happens I try to untangle the knot for a minute or so, swear, get the scissors, cut out the knot and go merrily on my way. But I can't afford to waste an inch of yarn here, so instead I'm wrestling with this blasted knot. In fact, I'm doing it right now, in between sentences and while reading other people's blogs.

There is a way to fix this for certain. But it involves frogging, and I don't wanna frog!! And anyway, at this point I've already cut the yarn once for not-knot related reasons, so right now there's nothing to do but soldier on and hope for the best.

And if it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world, right?

Right?

...Oh, who am I kidding. I WILL think it's the end of the world if it doesn't work out. Luckily, I am easily distracted, so someone can just wave a shiny skein in front of my face and I'll forget all about it.

In other news, I need to do something to liven up this blog. Right now it's all "Crocheted a hat and frogged it. Still not king."