Four years ago this month, we visited beautiful Alpine, Texas. My husband drove and I sat in the passenger seat, designing the Ray Flower (pages 31-32 of Crochet Bouquet). Next week, I’ll be going to Alpine again. This time, it’s for a crochet and knitting afternoon and book-signing at the incomparable Front Street Books (fsbooks.com).
It seems right to feature the Ray Flower in this month’s crochet along.
In the Ray Flower, you always work with only one yarn at a time, even though one row looks like it may have two yarns going at once. These step-by-step photos show you how it’s done. They are meant to supplement the crochet instructions in the book.
Colors alternate for four rounds of single crochet, in the center of the flower. Instead of cutting the color after each round, end it off but do not cut. Photo 1 shows Round 2, all finished and joined with a sl st. I opened the last loop enough to slip the skein of yarn through it. Now it’s ready for the next round. Photo 2 shows how it looks from the back.
Photo 3 is the Ray Flower, with Round 5 completed.
For Round 6 (Photo 4), you fold Round 5 out of the way, so you can stitch in the skipped stitches of Round 4.
Then you bring Round 5 back up and sc in the tops of its dc-sts, as in Photo 5.
Photo 6 shows Round 7 finished, except for the needle join. I love the needle-join, because you can’t see where the round begins or ends—very slick!
As you can see, I cut the yarn and pulled the last loop straight out of the top of the sc. The instructions say to “needle-join to first st of rnd.” The first st of the round is a ch-st, indicated by the orange arrow. The yellow arrow shows where to insert the tapestry needle, after you have threaded the yarn end in it.
With a needle-join, you are following the path of the top loop of the stitch you are joining to. So you insert the tapestry needle from the front, following the loop to the back, and then you insert the needle into the top of the stitch you just finished crocheting. (Photo 7)
For sc, dc, and treble, you should catch two threads in the back, before you weave in the end in the direction of the yellow arrow in Photo 8. For a ch st, there’s only one loop to catch before you weave in; for a hdc you needl to catch three threads. Look closely at Photo 8 to see the two threads the needle join catches.
For this sample of the Ray Flower, I used Lion Brand Yarns, LB Collection Cotton Bamboo. It’s soft with an attractive sheen.