This week has been another one of those crazy ones. lots of different things happening, not all of them good. Last Friday was I Love Yarn day and I decided to give yarn bombing a go. I’ve got quite a lot of really horrible acrylic yarn which had been pushed to the bottom of my stash. I couldn’t think of anything to do with it because it really feels very scratchy, pills quickly and is not really nice to work with (it squeaks when you YO!!!) I’ve been seeing a few yarn bomb projects on Instagram and then ‘I Love Yarn’ day happened and it all kind of clicked. I decided to bomb my front fence with granny squares, flowers and hexagons. The patterns are all from Robyn Chachula’s book Crochet Stitches Visual Encyclopedia. I highly recommend this book, it is fabulous. The instructions are very clear and she also includes diagrams for all the stitch patterns, squares, hexagons etc.
Since I don’t work on orders over the weekend, it’s one way of keeping things interesting and that way I also get to just do fun stuff, like trying out all sorts of different patterns, I spent Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday crocheting various patterns from the book. By Sunday afternoon I had a good variety and bombed the fence. I think it looks really great and it’s wonderful to see some colour on the fence. Unfortunately by Sunday afternoon my little one had also developed a bit of a temperature and was being very clingy.
I had been working on the fingerless glove tutorial throughout the week and was planning on sharing that with you today but yesterday turned into a sit-on-the-couch-and-cuddle kind of day, which isn’t conducive for writing blog posts, or taking photos for a tutorial, so I have decided to postpone the gloves for a week or two. I have also decided to post only one pattern tutorial a month from now on. This will give me time to write the tutorial and take photos. In future I will also only post the tutorials as PDFs, it takes far too long to format the post and I have to do it all twice, since I write it all up for the PDF as well. I hope you don’t mind.
So, you may be wondering why I titled this post “Popcorn Stitch”? Well, one of the motifs I made for the yarn bomb uses the popcorn stitch and I really enjoyed working with it. It’s called the Gallica Motif and would make an excellent dish or bath scrubby.
I had been posting photos of the finished articles on Instagram and one of my fellow IGers, dvsbunny, commented that she couldn’t figure the stitch out and so I said I’d share a photo tutorial for her.
And here it is. Enjoy 🙂
The Popcorn Stitch
I’m only going to show you how to make the actual stitch, not a pattern so in my sample I’ve used a row with 5 SC as my foundation. The popcorn stitch works well for ‘in the round’ projects, as it has a definite right and wrong side. If you wanted to use it in a flat project you would have to use a row of SC, or another simple stitch on the return row so that the popcorn stitches face the correct side.
I’ve included left and right handed photos for this tutorial, to make it easier for the righties out there 😉
Beginning Popcorn Stitch Begin with CH3.
4DC into the first stitch of previous row.
Remove the hook from the loop. (Yes, you can do it! Don’t worry your hard work will not spontaneously unravel 😉 )
Insert the hook into the first DC of the cluster, not the CH3.
Re-insert the hook through the loop on the last DC of the cluster.
shown Pull the loop through the first DC of the cluster so that the cluster pops out at the top. For this tutorial I finished the stitch off with SS and CH1.
Popcorn Stitch For the purpose of this tutorial I skipped one SC. You will obviously need to follow the pattern you are working with. 5DC into same stitch of previous row.
Remove the hook from the working loop and insert it into the 1st DC of the cluster.
Insert the hook through the working loop.
Pull the loop through the 1st DC of the cluster and finish with SS.
Well done! You have just completed the popcorn stitch! Here’s what it looks like from the correct side.
And the incorrect side.
Don’t forget to send photos of your creations to stephanie@radiate.co.za, or if you’re on Instagram tag them #loveabagofcrochet and @stephaniedavies. I would love to feature your work in a future post.