Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Imagine a Green Lantern crocheted baby blanket

BrandXsketch
A friend of mine is expecting a son sometime in the VERY near future.  His love of comics, and is astonishing ability to create them (just check out some of the things he does on his blog:  Brand X Blog, where he is a smokin' pencil for hire).  Not only is he exceptionally talented in creating images with pencil, ink and paper; he also delves into the digital arts.  Here's sort of a self portrait he created (I love it):

This seemed like the perfect opportunity to create a project for one of my favorite audiences:  BABIES!  They can't tell you they don't want to wear it, they are at the mercy of their parents sense of style.  If an infant doesn't like wearing something you've knitted, the crying exhibited can be easily blamed on 1) gas, 2) dirty diapers -perhaps an active display of displeasure towards a project that no sane person would considering wearing- 3) general fussiness.  In short, you can torture small humans with knitted and crocheted gifts and there is nearly nothing they can do about it.  Meanwhile, if they happen to smile while wearing or touching one of these handcrafted disasters, it is clearly as sign that they adore what you made for them... nevermind the dancing stuffed animal that they're looking at.


Considering the source of the new bundle, I started to look for something with the Green Lantern logo.  I found a chart for a tunisian crochet (and interesting technique that I have yet to try) by Maria Merleno on Ravelry.  It cited that the pattern was available on associated content website, but I couldn't find it.  After some tedious counting on the image they provided I duplicated it and have posted it here (with some graph lines).  Still, I wanted to do single stitches, but my gauge wasn't exactly 1:1.   I decided to double all of the numbers, so that it was twice as high and twice as wide.  I had to tweak the rows between for a smoother transistion on the curves, and it seems to have come out pretty decently. The finished project, complete with scalloped edging, and slip stitch finishing where color changes take place has already been shipped!  I'm such a procrastinator, it is astonishing to think that this blanket will be delivered before the little man is!
Click here for link to google doc graph

6 comments:

Just Stitched said...

Hi,
Could you explain "slip stitch finishing" (or point me in the direction of a tutorial)? I have made most of this graph in half double crochet (US), and just now saw how NICE yours looks! (Mine looks not so good in some of the color change areas!) I'm planning to make a superhero blanket for my brother, so I'll be doing more graphs in the same fashion, and would like the rest to look a little better! Thanks!

Dania said...

I feel your pain when it comes to half double crochet color changes. Wanting people to not have to squint their eyes so they don’t get drawn to the odd steps and random strands where you transition from one color to another. The slip stitch decorative edge I did on this was time consuming but worthwhile. To accomplish this, what you’ll want to do is have the work facing you. Insert your hook where you’d like your outlining edge to be, and bring it up in between the next row (or next stitch, depending on if you’re going horizontally or vertically), and draw up a loop. Then… you do it again… and again and again until you’re wondering why you didn’t just settle for what you had. If you’re looking for an exact guide as to where to place the stitch, really it’s your own judgment. Pull up the loop, if it looks like it’s leaning too far on one color or the other, take it out and try again. For more secure stitches, do them through your half doubles… yes… through them. Also, you may want to try using a smaller hook and having more of these slip stitches, perhaps two for every row. Ok, I realize I’ve explained this pretty poorly, so here’s a link to a youtube video that shows the technique (even though it’s done on amigurumi the pertinent part starts at 1:30).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huO41EeeL0A

Cheers and hope your project goes well!

brad a. derbyshire said...

can you make patterns for the other lantern cores. its like omg hard finding a patterns for the others the ones i found are so waked from the one you have for green lantern its hard maken the other ones..

Dania said...

Actually someone else has made charts for the following corps: blue, indigo, red, black, orange, white... even Sinestro and Star Sapphire.

They are available on Ravelry.com (signing up is free, and it has been an invaluable tool for me). The designs were made/posted by "Iam 4Man" as free downloads.

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/iam-4man-designs

Good luck! Hope this helps

Unknown said...

I think you did a fabulous job! That is an awesome green lantern baby blanket.

Missing and Tattooed said...

My friend wants this made for her baby but my crochet skills...leave a lot to be desired! I'm wondering how hard it would be to knit this and what I would have to do.