Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Double Daisy Crocheted Rope


Day 279: As one bead-crochet project moved closer to completion, I determined to work out a pattern I've often wanted to chart, but for one reason or another, always shelved before I got the proverbial "round tuit." It's difficult to experiment when using tiny #11 beads, so I made a trek down to Shipwreck (purportedly the "largest bead supplier in the world") and bought four hanks of #8s so I could actually see what I was doing. I threaded them onto #10 crochet cotton, and with a #10 hook in hand, the real fun began.

Since the pattern for a crocheted rope is worked in a spiral and each bead has to be "rolled over" into its spot, the development of the pattern is somewhat counterintuitive. You seem to be working one step ahead of yourself at all times. I knew I'd make any number of mistakes before I had the sequencing perfected, so I cut the thread at about 12 feet and picked up each bead individually, sliding it along the full length of the cotton until I could stitch it in place. Once I'd determined the pattern over several repeats, I pulled the work apart and transcribed the color sequence. In working Double Daisy with two colors of flowers, the repeat is over 52 beads. Count carefully, because if you make a mistake, you'll have to cut your thread!

For those who may be curious, the sequence working around a base of six beads is 3A, (B, C, B), A, 2B, A, 2B, A, (B, C, B), 4A, 2B, A, 2D, 4A, (D, C, D), A, 2D, A, 2D, A, (D, C, D), 4A, 2D, A, 2B, A.
Daisy centers are shown in parentheses. A = green, B = red, C = yellow (center), D = white.

4 comments:

  1. holy cow Crow!!! Do you ever sit idle????? (well, I don't either, but........) this is a fantastic piece and complements to your tenacity!

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    1. Nope, not ever! I always have something in my hands. I don't watch TV (well, an hour of DVD at bedtime), so I have plenty of time for handwork and reading.

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  2. I really like this design and tried to use your beading sequence in the jbead program to chart out how many beads I needed, etc., but instead of pretty daisies, I ended up with a mismash of "pixels". I'm going to try this the old fashioned way: thread a sequence of beads as you outlined and start crocheting. :)

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    1. The sequence is a little counter-intuitive, which probably accounts for why the program didn't interpret it correctly.

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