Rose's Rows Crochet

Teachers can have such an impact on our children's lives. Recently my son's teacher had to leave the school to care for her ailing mother, and because she had been such a stellar influence on my family I felt compelled to create her a parting thank-you gift for all she's done. If there's a teacher or educational professional in your or your child's life that you appreciate, give them a gift of thanks with this cute crochet Pencil Scarf. It features easy texture stitches for the body (post stitches) and the ferrule (back loop single crochet) to give it some depth, and graphghan-style lettering to let the recipient know you think they're "No. 1". The lettering may be difficult for beginners, but instructions are provided to leave it off if desired. The length of the scarf can also be extended or reduced by adding or subtracting rows in the yellow body of the pencil before the lettering section. It doesn't need a full skein of any color except ye...

Filet crochet is a sequence of meshes and solid spaces alternated to form a larger picture, as complex or simple as desired. The term "filet crochet" has been around since at least 1912, but this simple technique - made to mimic more complicated lace techniques and formerly called "square crochet" - has been around for much longer. It is versatile in both what you can make, and the fact that you can use nearly any kind of needlepoint graph, grid, or chart to create a filet crochet piece. You can even make your own on graph paper, or use websites like StitchFiddle to make a digital version. You can even reverse designs so that open squares are solid and vice versa for a different look. Written instructions for filet crochet exist but they are less common than the chart form, so this post will focus on how to read and interpret filet graphs and translate them to written form. Plain mesh is pretty simple to create - typically 1 dc, 2 ch, sk 2, repeat ad nauseam ,...

Today's post combines two of my passions - music and crochet. I am a trained operatic soprano, and although I don't do it for a living, I do sing with my local chorale. I couldn't find a good treble clef crochet chart for a scarf I'm considering making, so I utilized my favorite chart-making site StitchFiddle.com and a free vector image of a treble clef found on Google Search to make my own! I love the versatility of StitchFiddle - you can not only make crochet charts but also knitting and needlepoint, with multiple different types of each (for example, corner-to-corner aka C2C or filet crochet). You can either start by uploading your own image - which StitchFiddle will use in conjunction with settings like number of colors, pixels/squares, and gauge to generate you a chart - or you can start with a blank canvas and hand-edit each pixel. I did the latter with my clef because I wanted to fit it into a space 35 pixels high and the uploaded image lost too much detail in ...