Navigation

Quick Links

Personal

Interests

Recipes

Cards

Quotes

Return

Return to Homepage

Personal

Interests

Crochet

Mixed Media

There are tons of different yarn types out there and sometimes it can be hard to tell from the images in a catalog, or even just on the skein, how they are going to work out as a yarn material.  I find especially ribbon yarns can be unpredictable, or just how bulky, bulky yarns will be.  One way of trying them is to make a single-skein project for each type of yarn you want to try, and see that way.  But, I don't have a lot of use for a dozen scarves in different materials.  So, I decided to do a kind of "sampler" afghan, made from "mixed media": a bunch of different kinds of yarns that I was inclined to try.  I bought one or two skeins of each type of yarn I wanted to try out, and a base yarn to help me fit them all together.  This produced an afghan which became an extraordinary tactile experience.  I made into large granny squares (6 rows) to make the different textures easy to separate from one another (although, some balls/skeins/hanks could not complete even one complete square.  Consequently, I used my leftovers to do smaller squares and filled in the rest of the square with the base colour. In a very few cases I mixed materials in one square if they were of similar bulk or texture.  Depending on the size of the afghan you make and the number of sample textures you use, you will need different amounts of the base colour.  So I suggest starting with a pound skein of the base colour (I used Ocean from Caron for mine), and skeins that size have no dye-lots, so if you need more, you don't have to worry about it not matching.  Each square that size, using the K hook I did, came to between 7.5 inches and 9 inches across.  That's a lot of variation, and so accommodations needed to be made when sewing the squares together.  If you want more uniformity, you can adjust the size of smaller squares to the size of the larger squares by adding more Ocean border in single crochets.  I wanted to keep the slight non-uniformity as part of my design.

This is a pretty easy afghan to put together, but the directions do assume that you know some basic stitches, and since they are pretty general, how to join yarn and work with corners.

Hook: Crochet hook K/10-1/2

Materials: Base Colour (A) Ocean from Caron or any dark/contrasting colour will do
And a variety of skeins of different textures.  Each granny square seems to take about 40-45 yards of yarn for a complete square (for your average weight yarn, more for thicker yarns), so use that to judge the quantity you will need.  A throw size afghan will be about 7X6 squares (42 total), whereas an bedspread size afghan could be up to 10x10 squares (100 total); that's about 1900 yards of the variety yarns for a throw, or 4000 yards for a bedspread.

Directions:

Squares: Using each variety yarn, create a simple granny square.  (Don't try to make it something visually more interesting.  With all the different textures, the visual information will be lost or be overwhelming. Something simple and easy is best here.)  The finished squares should be six rows.

Assembly: Use the A colour to complete any squares that didn't make it to the sixth round.  Add a row of single crochets around each square.  (You can use additional single crochet rows to make your squares of uniform size if you wish.)  Join color at corner.  Sc in each stitch across.  At corners, turn chain stitch takes 3 sc.  Use whip stitches to join squares.

In my case, because the squares were different sizes, I clustered my largest squares near the center, and worked outward.  The afghan took on a (very) slightly diamond-shaped form, and the horizontal and vertical rows did not always line up.  But it makes for an interesting intentional feature.

Border:  Single crochet all around for a simple finish.

Some things I learned making this afghan:

Department 71/Naomi yarn and Bernat's Really Big yarn both make great rug yarns. They form a really tight stitch with a K hook, but they go really fast.  I couldn't make a 6-row granny with two balls of the Bernat's.  And my arm was really sore the next day with the effort required.  And colour choices are limited.

I am of mixed minds about ribbon yarns.  The thicker the better seems to be a trend though.  Lion Brand's Incredible, for instance was good.  Thinner ribbon yarns had too scratchy a texture.

I don't like Snowball or Pomp-a-doodle yarns; these are the kind with the fluffy nuggets separated by string.  They are hard to work with, and the "wrong" side becomes the good side, because it's too easy to see the string stitches on the "right" side.  You get the hang of working with them after a while, but unless you really like that fluffy puff they have, they aren't worth it.

Save the superfine yarns for doilies, but they can be useful to mix with other yarns and work two or three strands at once for your own unique look... but this can be expensive!

I'm not sure I would make an entire afghan out of any of these.

Aside from the expense, though, mohair is still wonderful. :)

I did like Curly Q yarn also, and will probably try it again for something else.  It stretches, so it's quite flexible.  If you put a little tension on it, it will act like yarn of more length.  Or use a big hook (like an N or P) and very little tension and it will go like a thick yarn with lots of stretch.

Faux Furs yarns, and there are a lot of them now, are better than I thought they'd be.  I will probably try them for something bigger at some point.  And with all the varieties and brands, there isn't a problem getting colours I like.  However, if you are learning a new stitch/pattern, these may not be for you.  Pulling out stitches once you've made them is tough because the loose strands that make up the fur get tangled and knotted when you pull them out.

You can't possibly try all the yarns there are in one afghan, and I keep finding ones I missed.

Oh, and one more thing... plan ahead.  Once I got started, I kept finding new textures to add, and it got a bit carried away.  This thing is huge: more than big enough to hang off a king-size bed.

Lifelong Learning

Astronomy

Classical & Medieval

Philosophy & Logic

Linguistics

Mathematics

Mixology

MIS