u/carlfoxmarten

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...

As the title says, I'm attempting to use the Tunisian Simple Stitch to make button bands that attach directly to the hem edges of a cardigan, so I don't need to do any sewing.

I have vague ideas for how the button holes will be made on the matching band, but need to make sure the TSS rows are matching the Single Crochet hem edges so both bands line up properly between the hems.

I know a few things so far:

1. Since the hems I'm attaching to are all Single Crochet stitches, I should be able to match TSS rows to SC rows, and it ought to line up on both sides of the cardigan. (I had a lot of trouble tonight as there wasn't enough light to see the individual yarn strands, as I'd left my portable lamp at home today)
2. Buttonholes in TSS are gaps between rows (or at least, that seems to be the easiest method), so the buttons also need to be between two rows on the matching button band. This is why I've tripled the vertical lines on two consecutive rows, to attach the buttons to.
3. Dark yarn needs lots of light. I should have brought my portable lamp today.
4. Apparently, working the TSS rows and making sure I attach to the correct part of the edge of SC rows at the same time is too difficult, so I need to start with a line of Slip-Stitches from the back, then attach the TSS button bands to that instead.

If anybody has experience with this idea, please let me know. And if you have suggestions, I'm open to reasonable ideas. But please mark whether it's experience or a suggestion, so I know how much weight to give it!

Unfortunately, due to the entire project being predominately regular crochet, the final project is well outside the scope of this subreddit, so I won't be posting it here.

Like I've said before, I'm trying to use the Tunisian Simple Stitch (aka, the Afghan Stitch) for the button bands on this cardigan, mostly so I don't need to do anything too difficult to attach them on.

Unfortunately, I'd forgotten just how little light Tuesday's library has, and had left my modified desk lamp at home, thinking I wouldn't need it. Yeah, I needed it! It was incredibly difficult to see where I was supposed to put my hook for each row with such indirect lighting, so I'd kept pulling my flashlight out to try to see better. Not exactly easy when you really do need two hands (one for the hook, the other to hold the material so the hook goes where it needs to), and trapping it under my chin definitely wasn't helping.

On the positive side, it did show me that I should probably do some slip-stitches along the back side of the hems here, so I can attach the TSS hems to that far more reliably, reducing the number of things I need to keep track of at one time to what I hope is a manageable amount at a time.

Which of course means I didn't actually get any real progress done aside from this learning experience. Sigh. I knew it wasn't going to be a snap to put these button bands on...

In the second picture, you can see a slightly bulging vertical line across two rows. This is how I plan to reinforce the band so I can attach a button there. I'm relatively certain this is enough, plus it also highlights where I need to add a buttonhole on the matching band, hopefully making it a little easier to line everything up.

And before you try and say my tensions are perfect, they're very, very much NOT. I've got dips in the left edge and I'm not sure what's going on to cause them.

This may be the first scarf where I've needed to block it before use! And I haven't actually done any blocking yet, either!

On the positive side, this is the most portable project I've ever had. Much as a previous scarf or two have been able to fit into a pretty small (if long) box, this one has the smallest volume I've had yet. It even fits inside a messenger bag I've had for ages, while still fitting a fair few other things in there on small shopping trips.
(ie, shopping trips for small items)

As a result, I've actually been able to make progress on this while I've been on nearly every bus trip I've been on since I started this project a couple of weeks ago. Though, not so much when I've been at home or at library groups, as I have another, larger, older project that has priority when possible.

I'd obtained the yarn secondhand (from a late yarn-crafter's stash), with the label removed before I got it, so I've no firm idea what this yarn is, but the "burn" test merely melted it, which makes me think it's 100% acrylic. It feels basically like Fingering (Size 2), but nicely fluffy, which makes it perfect for this scarf.

On the slightly negative side, my intent with this project was a lightweight scarf, but it's coming out pretty warm. I may need to try something even thinner yet to make an actually lightweight scarf. Or actually go up a couple of hook sizes? I guess experimentation is needed...

I don't know if nine is too many buttons, but I am a little nervous about how tightly this is going to fit me, so my current thinking is that more is better.

Given how many times I've undone previous steps to ensure they're about perfect, I'm taking this particular (and potentially final) step a bit more slowly and carefully. Since it's an unusual number of buttons, I'm attempting to place them both evenly and aesthetically-suitable. For example, the bottom button should be in the middle of the "ribbing" band, and the button directly above that should be in the middle of the grey band of Alpine stitch above the ribbing, which means that I need to make similar amounts of space between all the rest of the buttons. Not just between the buttons, but between the buttons and the borders between the two colours.

I'm hoping I'll be looking at this cardigan for a very long time into the future, so I don't want to rush into this and make glaring spacing mistakes. Especially since I'm OCD enough to know they exist and be really bothered by it!

Today, I tried a couple of spacing options (and using another piece of yarn seems to be the easiest way to mark positions right now), and just sat and looked at it as I worked on another project, so I'm going to look at this for a little longer before deciding whether this is the spacing I want to go with.

Fingers crossed I won't need to do much frogging on this nearly-final step!

It really feels right this time! Woohoo! =^.^=

I only had time this evening to finish the last pair of rows, so I need to add a single row joining the tops of the last pair of rows together in some way. Last time I'd done this with HDC stitches, so I'm going to try that again. If that doesn't work, maybe I'll go up a hook size or two and try Linked-DC stitches? Because the LDC I've been doing for the inside stitches aren't laying properly with a 4mm hook.

Anyway, in theory, I should be able to test out a few collar ideas next, then add the button bands! And then sew the buttons on, and I'll finally, finally be done!!! =^.^=

I am so pleased that all my math and both of my charts have actually lined up properly. It just goes to show that, if you keep notes on all your previous failures, you will eventually get it right!