u/carlfoxmarten

So, I found out that starting a swatch of TSS off the bottom of another TSS swatch makes a very difficult to see seam. Sure, the first row of the first swatch is recessed a bit (probably down to my cast-on method), but you can hardly even tell that the Return Passes run in opposite directions between the two halves!

Anyway, given the downward-facing "chevrons" on the upper arms of the Star Trek: Lower Decks uniforms, I really, really want the white line between the other two colours to be a single, basically* unbroken row all the way around the cardigan. Hence why the mitred squares that will form the top of the outer arms.

Working the three sections in a clockwise order (in the picture, front rectangle, mitred square, then back rectangle) has produced the absolute best result in nearly seamless attachments between the three sections.
(after all, TSS attaches to something below it, and to its left in a nearly seamless manner!)

But as you can see, it now has a very sharp point at the base of the mitred square. I have some ideas for how to address that, but need to come up with another way to increase along the mitre line so it doesn't leave a string of holes. Along with some way to gradually start the increases at the base of the square.

If anyone has suggestions, I'm all ears! =^.^=

I'm actually rather pleasantly surprised by how quickly I've been able to cycle through my attempts for this cardigan. Here's hoping this one doesn't take two years like my last one! =^.~=

A very rewarding side project to relax after a two-plus-year project, my Star Trek inspired scarf is now complete! =^.^=

Using Easy Knit's "Baby Luv" yarn and the Tunisian Double-Knit Stitch, it's turned into the second softest scarf I've ever made, and the softest scarf I've made with 100% acrylic yarn!

It was mostly an experiment to see if I could start the project on an angle (and eventually, change colours), and it's a rousing success! =^.^=

I'd run both colours of yarn through my yarn winder a couple of times to tighten the yarns' twist, which made it possible to use a 2.5mm afghan hook. Which is exactly perfect! Took a bit of time to find any of my 3.0mm hooks, as they seem to be in the missing crochet hook set...

Dangit! =>.<=

I was supposed to count to 54 rows (or 52, I might need to count the first end a couple more times) for the second red end, but while I was putting stitch markers every ten rows, I'd counted my first one (marking the very first full-width red row) along with the other four ten-count rows, so I'd only done 44 full-width red rows.

At least I didn't cut the yarn yet?

Fortunately, it won't take me too much longer to fix this, so I'll be able to get to all the finishing off that this will need before it's complete.

The usual reminder, the yarn is Easy Knit's "Baby Luv" yarn in red and black, I'm using a 2.5mm afghan hook and a 3mm regular crochet hook, and the body of this uses the Tunisian Double-Knit Stitch. The hem I'd started with was made with Stacked Double-Crochet stitches, and my first attempt at the finishing hem was made with interlocking "invisible" SC decreases. Which means that each TDKS row end has one leg from both adjacent decrease stitch in it. I'm not convinced it's the best option, so will be trying another idea next time.

My Tunisian Double-Knit Stitch red and black scarf, which has proven to me that you can start and change colours on both diagonals, is now finally long enough to add the other red end on!

And since it's (American) Star Trek Day, I'm wearing my appropriate T-Shirt! =^.^=
(Canada got to see it two days earlier, for fun reasons*)

The yarn is Easy Knit's "Baby Luv", in red and black, and is so squishy and soft that I'm able to use a 2.5mm afghan hook to make a very dense material! It's going to be a very great scarf when I'm finished!

*Note: Back in the days of broadcast television, and with most of Canada's population being near the southern border, we Canadians could receive American TV stations pretty easily, so if we got American TV shows after the US saw them, our stations wouldn't get the advertising money. Thus, most American shows got shown at least one or two days ahead of the US. Which means that Canadian Star Trek Day is actually two days ahead of the US one. =^.~=

Now that I know that I can slope the colour change in the opposite direction, I've undone the temporary test and have continued extending the black section around my neck.

The final scarf will be long enough to go up one side of my chest, around the back of my neck, then around the front and back again, to drape down the other side of my chest. It's my favourite way to wear these scarves! =^.^=

Also, I've recently found out what this yarn is (as I'd obtained both minus their labels, from a late knitter's stash donated to one of the yarn-craft groups I'm in) so I have more, should I want to make another version of this scarf. Easy-Knit's "Baby Luv" (not technically what the label says, but that's what their website calls it), and at least one local Walmart has it in a few colours.

Nice to see that there's more options for the Tunisian Double-Knit Stitch that I hadn't found before! =^.^=

Unlike the first time I'd tried it, this second attempt at sloping the Tunisian Double-Knit Stitch upwards to the right was quite a lot more successful.

The only drawback (as you can see in the second picture) is the tiny red dots some distance from the actual colour boundary. And while it's not that big an issue, technically, as I likely can cover it up with some surface slip-stitch, I still don't like it.

But I can't argue that the back (third picture) looks fantastic! Guess this is the technique I'll be using when I get to that point!

After all, this is the halfway point, and this was just an experiment to see what I could learn about making the colour change slope in the opposite direction. And since I've proven that I can do this, I get to undo all of this, duplicate the all-black rows I currently have, the redo this diagonal colour change, and essentially repeat the other end of the scarf, mirrored.

All in all, a good amount of work!

Though I'll probably just bask in this experiment's results for the moment.

Unfortunately, having spent a night in the hospital over the weekend hasn't helped my energy levels (merely a properly-sprained wrist, nothing a wrist brace I already have can't help with), so there's additional reason to leave it as-is for the moment. Just gotta get way more rest than my normal... =>.<=

Unlike the first time I'd tried it, this second attempt at sloping the Tunisian Double-Knit Stitch upwards to the right was quite a lot more successful.

The only drawback (as you can see in the second picture) is the tiny red dots some distance from the actual colour boundary. And while it's not that big an issue, technically, as I likely can cover it up with some surface slip-stitch, I still don't like it.

But I can't argue that the back (third picture) looks fantastic! Guess this is the technique I'll be using when I get to that point!

After all, this is the halfway point, and this was just an experiment to see what I could learn about making the colour change slope in the opposite direction. And since I've proven that I can do this, I get to undo all of this, duplicate the all-black rows I currently have, the redo this diagonal colour change, and essentially repeat the other end of the scarf, mirrored.

All in all, a good amount of work!

Though I'll probably just bask in this experiment's results for the moment.

Unfortunately, having spent a night in the hospital over the weekend hasn't helped my energy levels (merely a properly-sprained wrist, nothing a wrist brace I already have can't help with), so there's additional reason to leave it as-is for the moment. Just gotta get way more rest than my normal... =>.<=

I've been in a bit of a "craft slump" lately, but have finally picked this project back up again and have reached a very important point.

Given the way Star Trek uniforms have the colours on their shoulders shaped (sloping up towards the neck, for the most part), ideally the colour changes would be sloping opposite directions on each end of this scarf.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out how to get the change between colours to slope in the opposite direction in a satisfactory way just yet (fortunately, sloping the end in that way is very easy!), so I have at least two alternative ideas for how to achieve this:

Option 1: Pause here (it's about the halfway point already!) and duplicate this work from the other end, then somehow join them together. In theory, this ought to work fairly well, actually, as it'll have both (identical) sections facing each other "backwards" to each other. I'm pretty sure this means the edge "chains" should line up properly? Though I'm not 100% confident of it.

Option 2: Pause here (this time to experiment) and try out a few options for sloping the colour change in the opposite direction. I did actually try this other direction once, but was hugely disappointed by the effects at the time. Granted, I was still insistent that the results be nearly perfect (which, it turns out, even my first colour change really isn't), so there's a definite possibility that I can make the opposite slope work. Probably after a couple of tries. But worth trying.

I suspect that I need to try Option 2 first, as if that doesn't work I can fall back to Option 1.

Anybody have any pithy words of wisdom for me? =^.^=

The more I added to the previous version of this scarf, the more I was convinced that it was just too wide for my neck. After frogging and restarting, it's now down to four and a half inches wide, and I'm a lot more satisfied with that than the five and a half it was before.

Unfortunately, it's also shown me that I do, in fact, want to "design" what this particular scarf looks like. =^.~=

I say that mostly because I was all set to be lazy and change colours only when necessary, but it turns out my hardly-accurate math told me that the red yarn would last a whopping four feet! In theory, I might be able to get two scarves out of this, one with red ends and a black middle (TNG-style uniform effect) and one with black ends and a red middle (Voyager/DS9-style effect).

And since it turns out my magnet-backed Combadge set actually can hold quite nicely through this thickness, it turns out I would like to be able to use one of them to keep the ends from coming loose.

It's still the Tunisian Double-Knit Stitch, and still using unknown yarn. Though I may need to figure out how to make the colour change slant in the opposite direction a lot harder. The diagonals are supposed to slope outwards and downwards, after all. Unless I can put the wrongly-sloping line underneath the "correct" one?

Yes, I did try to avoid turning this into yet another Star Trek themed piece. Especially since the next few crochet cardigans I have planned are all Star Trek uniforms of various eras. But it turns out I couldn't resist the pull of the idea, and the fact that my Combadges all work through this thickness of material was the clincher that sealed the deal for me.

Maybe I'll be able to find other skinny yarn that doesn't fit the Star Trek colour scheme... =^.^=

Somebody I'd shown the previous version of this scarf to had suggested putting triangles on an end, and since the focus of this version is the diagonal join(s), I figured I may as well try it out.

As it turns out, it's working perfectly! =^.^=

In this case, I'd started with some Stacked DC stitches (my go-to TDKS start nowadays, as it sort of matches with the SC edge I need to end with most of the time), but instead of attaching directly into the whole thing immediately, I started with just three stitches (right edge, first stitch, "last stitch"), and the next row attached into the "last stitch" of the previous row, making everything work extremely well.

My only complaint is just how loose the starting section is looking, but if I keep some of the red yarn, I should be able to do at least something to cover the holes.

I'm still split between using all the red yarn up in one go before switching to the black, or cutting the red in half and putting some amount of black in the middle.

Though I still don't know (yet) how to make the other end on an angle. Some experimentation will be needed.

After starting two years and nearly two months ago (not taking into account the month and a half I took off for my sanity), my cardigan based on the Command-branch Starfleet uniforms from the TNG ear of Star Trek is finally, actually complete! =^.^=

The vast majority of it is crochet, using the Alpine stitch for everything but the "ribbing", and the button bands and collar using the Tunisian Simple Stitch. I knitted the cuff "pads" (to keep the cuffs' exterior flat and straight to match the actual uniforms, but to also keep cold drafts from blowing past my wrists) as well as the pocket for the Combadge. The latter of which (an officially licensed TNG-era one by Qmx) has a back-plate with magnets to hold it in place, so the pocket keeps the plate from falling should the badge on the outside be pulled off.

The yarn is Lion Brand "Pound of Love" in both "Charcoal" (dark grey) and "Claret" (dark red), and despite having bought four balls of it (two of each colour), in the end, it only weighs two and three-quarter pounds. Yes, the majority (13 ounces) of the second dark grey ball of yarn is left, but I thought I'd used way more of the red.

I'm sorry, but I will not be releasing the pattern at any time soon. As the "over two years" timescale indicates, I'd made a lot of mistakes in the process to reach this point. And starting with it being bottom-up, unfortunately. Much as it made certain aspects of the process way easier, it made the shoulders so, so much harder than they needed to be. And you can see just how badly I've screwed them up (despite the literal four months I spent on them, having frogged the entire shoulders three times, and backed up at least seven) by the oddly-shaped bulges sticking out, even if I have my arms hanging straight down.

Eventually, I will revisit this idea, but have several projects planned in between now and then. For example, a Tunisian crochet Lower Decks cardigan that has me quite excited over the possibilities, and for which I've already bought all the yarn necessary. Hopefully that one I can release a lot sooner. But I will eventually revisit this particular idea, as a textured TNG-era cardigan is still a fun concept.

After starting two years and nearly two months ago (not taking into account the month and a half I took off for my sanity), my cardigan based on the Command-branch Starfleet uniforms from the TNG ear of Star Trek is finally, actually complete! =^.^=

The vast majority of it is crochet, using the Alpine stitch for everything but the "ribbing", and the button bands and collar using the Tunisian Simple Stitch. I knitted the cuff "pads" (to keep the cuffs' exterior flat and straight to match the actual uniforms, but to also keep cold drafts from blowing past my wrists) as well as the pocket for the Combadge. The latter of which (an officially licensed TNG-era one by Qmx) has a back-plate with magnets to hold it in place, so the pocket keeps the plate from falling should the badge on the outside be pulled off.

The yarn is Lion Brand "Pound of Love" in both "Charcoal" (dark grey) and "Claret" (dark red), and despite having bought four balls of it (two of each colour), in the end, it only weighs two and three-quarter pounds. Yes, the majority (13 ounces) of the second dark grey ball of yarn is left, but I thought I'd used way more of the red.

I'm sorry, but I will not be releasing the pattern at any time soon. As the "over two years" timescale indicates, I'd made a lot of mistakes in the process to reach this point. And starting with it being bottom-up, unfortunately. Much as it made certain aspects of the process way easier, it made the shoulders so, so much harder than they needed to be. And you can see just how badly I've screwed them up (despite the literal four months I spent on them, having frogged the entire shoulders three times, and backed up at least seven) by the oddly-shaped bulges sticking out, even if I have my arms hanging straight down.

Eventually, I will revisit this idea, but have several projects planned in between now and then. For example, a Tunisian crochet Lower Decks cardigan that has me quite excited over the possibilities, and for which I've already bought all the yarn necessary. Hopefully that one I can release a lot sooner. But I will eventually revisit this particular idea, as a textured TNG-era cardigan is still a fun concept.

Aside from not having enough of the original red yarn to finish this scarf on its own, I keep trying it on and not liking just how wide this is. As it turns out, five and a half inches (or maybe five-and-three-quarters) is definitely too wide to be comfortable on me.

And since it is for me (and technically intended to be a lighter weight scarf for spring and fall), I'll be frogging this entire project to slim it down to about four and a half inches wide.

Interestingly, I found out that my Qm^(x)-made, officially-licensed Star Trek Combadges (that use magnets to attach to your shirts and/or uniforms) can actually stay attached to this material. If the diagonal had landed in a useful location (ie, down one leg while wrapped around my neck), it would have worked incredibly well as a Star Trek themed scarf.

Hopefully I can get this colour change in a more useful location next time around.

And if not, it's incredibly tempting to try forcing the issue, by actually planning where the colours go, and putting one colour at each end, with the other colour in the middle...
(but the amount of work to plan all that!!!!)

After starting two years and nearly two months ago (not taking into account the month and a half I took off for my sanity), my cardigan based on the Command-branch Starfleet uniforms from the TNG ear of Star Trek is finally, actually complete! =^.^=

The vast majority of it is crochet, using the Alpine stitch for everything but the "ribbing", and the button bands and collar using the Tunisian Simple Stitch. I knitted the cuff "pads" (to keep the cuffs' exterior flat and straight to match the actual uniforms, but to also keep cold drafts from blowing past my wrists) as well as the pocket for the Combadge. The latter of which (an officially licensed TNG-era one by Qm^(x)) has a back-plate with magnets to hold it in place, so the pocket keeps the plate from falling should the badge on the outside be pulled off.

The yarn is Lion Brand "Pound of Love" in both "Charcoal" (dark grey) and "Claret" (dark red), and despite having bought four balls of it (two of each colour), in the end, it only weighs two and three-quarter pounds. Yes, the majority (13 ounces) of the second dark grey ball of yarn is left, but I thought I'd used way more of the red.

I'm sorry, but I will not be releasing the pattern at any time soon. As the "over two years" timescale indicates, I'd made a lot of mistakes in the process to reach this point. And starting with it being bottom-up, unfortunately. Much as it made certain aspects of the process way easier, it made the shoulders so, so much harder than they needed to be. And you can see just how badly I've screwed them up (despite the literal four months I spent on them, having frogged the entire shoulders three times, and backed up at least seven) by the oddly-shaped bulges sticking out, even if I have my arms hanging straight down.

Eventually, I will revisit this idea, but have several projects planned in between now and then. For example, a Tunisian crochet Lower Decks cardigan that has me quite excited over the possibilities, and for which I've already bought all the yarn necessary. Hopefully that one I can release a lot sooner. But I will eventually revisit this particular idea, as a textured TNG-era cardigan is still a fun concept.

Well, I guess I should have expected my first experience sewing buttons on to take a while to get good at, but I hadn't expected the first two buttons to take an hour and a half, and the next four to take nearly two hours.

Yes, I am getting better at this, but I also think having loads of elbow room at today's library helped a lot as well.

Fortunately, there's only three buttons left, and after that it's basically complete!

Then I take a decent break from large projects for some length of time so I can start and finish a few smaller projects...

And I may need to back up a little bit to fix something. I'm missing two rows by the time I'm down to the bottom hem on here, so I think I was supposed to double up a couple of rows somewhere.

I suspect, the next time I have the space to check everything over again, I need to stop and examine what I've done so far, just to make sure everything is where it's supposed to be.

Fortunately, this is way, way less stressful than the possibility of needing to redo anything else on this project, so I'm not too worried about this little bit of work. =^.^=

Also, you can see just how tiny the ball of dark grey yarn is here. I was fully expecting to need to dip into the remaining 10 ounces of the second Lion Brand "Pound of Love" skein in "Charcoal" (dark grey) yarn, which turned out to be entirely unnecessary. Hopefully I get to pack way lighter next time!
(in case you're interested, the dark red yarn is "Pound of Love" in "Claret", which I've used almost one-and-three-quarters of a pound of so far)

Once the button bands are complete and the loose ends woven in, it appears that I merely need to attach the buttons and I'm done! Man! Almost complete, finally! =^.^=

Unfortunately, it's pretty obvious that I don't have enough of this bright red yarn to make a full scarf. My math indicates that, at the five-and-a-half inch width it is now, it'll only be about thirty-four inches long. And I usually prefer my scarves around 48-52 inches long, so it's way, way short of that goal.

Fortunately, I have this black yarn that's very similar in thickness and shine (though it is subtly thicker and less glossy than the red), so I'm going to augment the length with the black yarn.

(I'd obtained both yarns from someone else, and they were missing their labels by that point, so I have no idea where to buy more)

I was looking for an interesting way to change colours, and thought this diagonal would be interesting. Turns out, it is interesting! I just changed colours too soon, and have about 10 grams of the red left over.

Unfortunately, it's not 100% the same on both sides, as there's an obvious line, so I'm tempted to try running the diagonal in the other direction. Especially since I'll be undoing this, pushing it upwards a bunch, to hopefully use up more of the red yarn...

I'll admit, it's a little frustrating to find so many limitations for the Tunisian Double-Knit Stitch. Enough that I really need to try actual double-knitting, especially for colour-work.

My row counting has needed to get especially careful for this part (especially since I think I'd corrected the right hem (left in this picture) in the wrong direction, on the boundary between the dark red section and the dark grey one above it, but it's otherwise working out well enough for now.

I'll admit I wasn't terribly careful about the button band I have on there already (the right-hand one, on the left in this photo) as it merely has the attachment points for the buttons (where I tripled the vertical bars on two consecutive TSS rows to make it a more solid place to sew buttons to). While the left button band (on the right in this picture) will have the matching buttonholes.

I'd attempted to make a slightly reinforced buttonhole, by doing some slip-stitches and chains around said hole, but it really, really didn't look right at all. So I'm merely doing yarn-overs instead of regular TSS stitches and hoping it's enough.

Though, now that I think about it, I may have needed to make the top buttonhole narrower, as the matching button on the collar is actually smaller than the rest of the buttons. But I think I'm going to try the cheap and lazy way out by stitching it more closed, once I'm certain I don't need to frog the rest of it.

But it's turned out far, far faster than I'd expected, and if I'd had an additional half an hour to an hour tonight, I probably would be almost done by now. Only a bit longer, I think, before the second button band is complete, then sew the buttons on! Woohoo! =^.^=

This was taken partway through the slip-stitch process on the second hem, but it is complete now! Which should mean I can start on the TSS button bands next. Hopefully I won't have to redo anything from this step, because that was actually a lot more tedious than I'd expected!

The lamp was a broken desk lamp I'd modified to run off a USB power bank, but it turns out it wasn't actually bright enough for this part of the process (turns out, I needed a lot of light to do this part!), and since I was already using magnets to hold various useful things to the lamp's arm, I had a couple of spare magnets to attach my flashlight to the head on this lamp. I'm actually kind of annoyed that my flashlight is way brighter than my lamp is. Fortunately, both are rechargeable!
(it's portable enough to throw in my backpack, along with the power bank, but is too big for my project bag)

And in case you were wondering, yes, I did count stitches along each hem, and aside from a single stitch being the wrong colour on one hem (which I took into account in my counting), it appears that both hems match up about perfectly! Though my fingers are still crossed, just to be on the safe side.

I did assemble a trio of photos together showing the back of both hems all the way up, but didn't think it was interesting enough to share. You'll just have to take my word for it, I guess! =^.~=

So, what I'd discovered on Tuesday was that the TSS button bands need something consistent to attach to, instead of trying to attach to the hem directly.

Now, as you can see by the lovely texture going on here, I've used the Alpine Stitch to make the vast majority of this cardigan's body and sleeves, and it appears that the three-stitch-wide "hems" I'd left are alternating between SC and DC by row. This is to match the alternating rows of DC/FPDC and SC that comprises the Alpine Stitch, and it appears to have worked very well.

But this means that I have something far weirder to attach to than I'd expected. So today's amount of progress was far, far, far less than I'd been hoping for. In an hour and a half, I only reached three-quarters in length up one of the hems.

Once I finally have both hems slip-stitched, I'll be attaching the TSS button bands directly to these. Hopefully it won't take anywhere near as long, but I'm not holding my breath, just in case I run into further problems, yet again.

Slow progress is still progress, but it is rather much slower than I'd wanted...