Sheep, like us, come in various colours, and the different natural colours of sheep hair make for beautiful works in wool without any need for elaborate design. Each colour has a speckled quality which gives it great visual life and interest. I like to combine them in geometric shapes, and I find the results very satisfying. Some companies achieve the same thing with non-natural colours by clever spinning and dyeing, and call it ‘tweed’ or ‘heather’ - it's worth looking out for these. But in the case of Garthenor's lovely range, it just comes like that straight off the animal. It's also interesting to touch, and very warm.Materials:
Garthenor Organic Jacob Chunky, 4 skeins in Black and 4 in Grey (3 of each might be enough but I was working from stash with some left over from a previous project, and I'm not really sure how much I used, so 4 to be on the safe side). You can get this from iknitlondon, or online direct from Garthenor. 6mm crochet hook.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In the instructions below I am using the British/Irish terminology which I believe is also used in Australia and New Zealand, because it comes most naturally to me. American stitich names - which I freely admit are logically superior, they're just not what I'm used to - are off-by-one in relation to this. If you are used to the American system and you'd like to reproduce this object, you should simply cross out ‘dc’ and replace it with ‘sc’ throughout.
Execution:
With grey, make a crochet chain 48 sts long. Turn.
Ch 1 (counts as stitch into 1st st), 1dc into next ch, and so to end. (48 sts - this number will not change).
Turn. 1ch (counts as st into first st), 1dc into next st, continue to end, taking care not to miss the turning ch.
Continue till you have worked 12 rows of dc.
Break yarn and change colour by doing the last pull-through of the last st of the row with the new colour. Work 12 rows in black.
Repeat till you have 10 stripes.
Turn the work through 90 degrees and make 2ch to stand as first stitch down the side.
Work 1dc into the first, second, and fourth out of every four rows all the way down the side to the end. (Non-expert crocheters: be careful working into the turning chains, it's a bit fiddly. It doesn't matter much exactly what loop you work into as long as you're consistent. Rows that went one way will be trickier than rows that went the other way. I advise you to always pick up two threads, not more and not less. Depending on how you were taught to make your starting chain, you might have to do an extra stitch at the very end - this is fine - just do what has to happen to make the end straight.)
Turn and work back in the usual way, continue till you have worked 12 rows. Break wool.
Join in grey at the grey end, and work 12 rows on the other side in the same way.
Work in ends.
Very cosy.
Less is more.
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