Cat Mad Crochet

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Sometimes, I run across a stitch pattern that seems beautiful but is, in fact, evil to work. Often this means I never touch it again, but sometimes it continues to run around in my brain, and I end up pulling it out again and again. The first time I ever worked with what I am calling the Lazy Daisy stitch pattern, I made a little wrap with it and felt lucky to have survived the process. It’s a very attention heavy project as you really need to keep counting chains the entire time, and all those chains and the counting were a bit mind numbing. I got really tired of them after a while. Not only that, it seemed to take forever for the darn thing to show growth. I swore off the stitch pattern and moved on to other things.

But then I saw it again years later. So dainty. So pretty. So open and drapey. I tried it again. Let me be honest. There are soooo many chains and it really does grow very slowly. I highly recommend you do this project, if you choose to attempt it, in a yarn that is so wonderful to hand you get joy just from being near it to make up for the chain based monotony that will trap you and threaten to destroy you. I used Malabrigo Silkpaca, a lace weight blend of silk and alpaca, the first time I drove myself to work with this stitch pattern again. I used The Farmer’s Daughter Fibers’ Foxy Lady, a merino and silk blend, the second time. Yes, I have worked this miserable counting monster of a stitch pattern in three different projects. They were all about three years apart. That was my recovery time. In the last two projects, both yarns were so plushy and wonderful they carried me through.

A minute of yarn talk. Malabrigo Silkpaca is a two ply, lace weight, s-twist yarn made of silk and alpaca. It has a little bit of a halo and a very nice shimmer. Because of the plies, it holds up well. It has wonderful drape with the right hook and stitch pattern and is beautifully soft and alluring to work with. Because the yarn is so thin and the fibers so soft to start with, this yarn, held single, can take a small hook, like a 2 mm, and still provide really nice drape. The silk helps with the stitch memory, which the flighty alpaca would forget immediately. Farmer’s Daughter Fibers’ Foxy Lady is a single ply, fingering weight, z-twist yarn made of silk and merino. The z-twist and single ply give crochet stitches a nice sharp look, while still allowing good drape, stitch definition, and stitch memory. It makes for a clean and crisp project with good hand and drape. It’s a fingering weight yarn, so it requires a bigger hook than the lace weight yarn, but still gives good drape with a 3 to 4 mm hook.

The first time I resurrected this stitch pattern, I made a shawl. I thought it was going to be a point to side wrap. You know, one big happy triangle that just keeps going until I yell stop? Very little shaping once you have the first bit down and off you go. I thought that was reasonable given the constant counting this project would require. I quickly figured out it would not be a point to side wrap because the increase is not the happy 45 degrees that that wrap would require. How small is the little angle being produced? Let’s see.

Let’s get out our protractors and march back to high school geometry. Shudder visibly. Take a deep breath. Remember this isn’t graded, no one is judging your hair, and you can do this in your pajamas. Are we ready? 

So when we look at the protractor, which took a bit of digging to find, I got thirty degrees. That’s two thirds of the forty-five degrees I would need for a point to side wrap. Unwilling to frog what I had because it looked cool, I decided to work to a nice halfway point and then decrease back to another point on the other side. Awesome. Plan made, I set off. It took two hanks held double and a 3.5 mm hook to reach the middle, and then the same down the other side. It was more yarn than I thought it would take, but the final product was so beautiful, I was very happy with my choices. Hannah gave the wrap a happy home, and I trotted off to start the next project. 

Years pass. 

Hannah has some really pretty linen dresses that need warm wraps in colder weather. One is a rich, deep red. The purple Lazy Daisy wrap is a favorite of hers but it is very purple. Both vibrant purple and deep red call attention to themselves all alone in public. Paired, they scream. Hannah does not like screaming clothing, so she asked if I could make, perhaps, a less visually coruscating wrap that she could wear with her red dress. Of course I can!

I got myself a hank of Foxy Lady from the Farmer’s Daughter because it was the sort of week when a new hank of yarn could mean the difference between sulking for days or being happily creative at a new bit of yarn. This yarn is yummy! It’s soft and squishy and just looks like it wants to drape beautifully in a nice lace pattern. I balled it up and got started on Hannah’s new wrap.

This time I planned to make a nice, long, rectangular wrap/scarf that she could wear with lots of things because the color is soft and gentle but that she could also be a bit dramatic in because the stitch pattern is lacy and drapey and calls for swooning. Because this is a very open lace pattern, I had it in my head that I would need only one hank to do the whole project. This, dear reader, is an example of how I cannot gauge yarn requirements. Ever. I am historically bad at it to the point that I tend to over buy so that when I pull something gorgeous, but years out of production, from my stash, I have lots to play with and can make nearly anything I want.

In this case, one hank actually needed to be three. Allow me stop here and praise The Farmer’s Daughter Fibers for their consistent dyeing processes. I had to order a second hank months after I ordered the first. The dye lots were different. The color was not. I had to order a third a few weeks later. Again, the dye lots were different. The color was a perfect match. I have learned my lesson about buying enough for a project, but I fear it will only lead to massive over buys in the future, just in case.

Should you undertake this project, please know that it eats yarn as a hobby. It is an open pattern, but there is a lot of doubling up on pattern elements. Every petal is a line of chains up and a line back down, or side to side depending on which row you are on. This eats up yarn. Buy accordingly.

The main body of the scarf/wrap was easy enough because there were no increases or decreases, just straight pattern work. It was the border that had started to worry me as I worked the project. All those chain flowers kept telling me they wanted a border, but some of them argued for a simple border of a few rows of single crochet, while others argued, quite loudly, for a more dramatic border with some sort of points on the edge because, well, points are cool and they echo the interior flower petals. The more elaborate border won out.

I ended up combining elements of two borders from 75 Exquisite Trims in Thread Crochet, the book I consulted for the border. It has lots of fun, lacy borders that can really be done in a lot more yarn weights than thread. The set up rows came from my adaptation of “Picot Leaves” on page 45. I ended up working more singles between the chain spaces so I could have room for the pointed bits from the other pattern. The pointed elements are adapted from “Arches” on page 27. I wasn’t quite happy with the way the little pointy bits were coming out as the pattern was written: They were too long and not full enough. I subtracted two chains from the set up row for the pointy bits and left the number of single crochets the same on the return pass. It creates a shorter, fatter pointy bit, but I can relate to the shorter, fatter aspects, so I think it works nicely. 

So that’s the evolution from a long, sleek, isosceles triangular wrap without a border to a long, rectangular wrap/scarf with an elaborate border. I’ve included notes for both projects. Have fun playing with them. Please remember that they are not full patterns, but my notes with which you can create your own unique project.

Happy crafting!