Bobble-Cable Square | Gallery Throw Crochet-Along Session 1

Hi everybody, welcome to our live crochet Along. Woohoo, you guys, I'm super excited about this. I've actually never done a crochet along ever in my life before I've never participated in one and I have never led one ever before so this is all new to me, but I'm really excited to be teaching you guys how to make this throw that I designed and speaking of hardly evers and nevers, I hardly ever actually designed throws. Like this is a newer thing for me too, I've probably only designed maybe two or three blankets ever because they are longer term projects and I really like to skip around and do a little this and a little bit of that and so sometimes it's hard for me to just buckle down and make this, you know, make something this large. But the thing about this is that it's made out of all these little squares, all these little squares get stitched together and they use a bunch of different techniques and different colors, there are no two squares in this blanket that are exactly the same, okay? So, it kept my attention and it was fun for me and I really hope that you guys will follow along with me and make your own blankets at home. So, the way this is gonna work, obviously this is a live event, so if you have any questions, let me know, put them in the chat box but I'm just gonna first tell you what you can expect in the next few months but then, after that I'm gonna be demonstrating the first square from this blanket. So I named this blanket the gallery throw because I felt like as I was working on it didn't have a name for a long time and as I was working on it, I felt like each of these little squares is its own special little work of art and then there's a little frame around it and it just felt kind of like, you know, all these little squares on display, they can stand alone, but then together they make a really awesome blanket, so that's why it's called the gallery throw. And the way this is gonna work is once a month I am going to be demonstrating one of the squares from this blanket and then each square in the blanket is made up, you know, with a certain stitch pattern, today we're gonna be working on a cable bobble square for example, but each of those squares is going to be made up in five different color ways. So that way we're gonna have six techniques, so six different squares made with different stitch patterns, but then each of those six is going to have five different colorways, so we're gonna end up with 30 squares in the end and then we'll put our blanket together. So each time we meet up, we are going to go through how to make that square, whatever that square is for the day and then you guys can work on your squares and then if you have questions, you could certainly ask me during the live demonstration of that square but you can also come back and ask me things if I need to be a little bit more clear in the next crochet along live event. So, I will be bringing the older squares that I already worked on to each live event, so that way if you have questions, I can help demonstrate another, you know, part of it if you missed something or didn't quite understand part of it. So that way you guys get a chance to ask questions and you know, that way you'll be able to complete this blanket. So that was kinda my thought too is, you know, blankets are so hard for me to complete just because of the time of it, it just takes so long but this is going to be going on over like seven months, so you're gonna have plenty of time to be working on all those little squares in between when we meet up once a month. And if you're interested, the schedule is posted underneath the chat box on the creative crochet corner website so you can see when you can be expecting me to be coming back for the next squares coming up. Alright, so another thing I wanted to mention too is that in this download, so the download, there's a link to the download in the chat or in the description, so you can go ahead and download that, that is just going to give you today's download, which will be an overview of the blanket, so in included will be a list of all the materials you need for the entire blanket and kind of a little overview of the whole blanket and also it's going to give you the pattern for the square that we're working on today. So in the next download, like for the next lesson, I believe you will just be having the instructions for that particular square for that day, so you'll be needing to download them at each lesson so that you can follow along, okay? All right, so, let's start out by talking about materials. So I made this blanket with an acrylic worsted weight yarn, which is a number four size yarn, like the most prevalent yarn in the big box stores when you're looking through all the yarn, looking for an Afghan, it's like that thickness of yarn, okay? So I used five different colors plus one contrasting color, what I mean by that is, and lemme just pull these in here so you guys can see, these are all the colors that I used, plus I used a kind of an off white to make the border around each square and then to sew them all together and then there's one more additional couple of rounds of the border stitches on the outside with this lighter color. So I would recommend if you want it to look similar to mine, that you choose five colors that kinda coordinate and then one color that contrast pretty strongly with those five. However, having said that, really anything goes in this blanket, you can use your scrap yarn, you do not need to follow my suggestions for making, you know, I suggest make this out of color A and make this out of color B and do the border out of this and I will lead you all the way through, so you'll end up, you don't have to think about, you know, all the different colors you wanna use after you've bought your yarn, you can just follow the directions all the way through and then end up with the blanket that looks like mine but, if you just wanna use stuff from your stash, that is totally fine, you don't have to do it this way, it can be a complete patchwork of a whole gazillion colors, that is completely fine and it'll be really cool actually. But I did just wanna give you guys the information if you really liked the look of mine and how all the colors balance out, you know, a way to follow along and not have to think about what color to use, where, and how to make them all, you know, at the end, we're gonna be talking about where to put all the squares in order to sew them together, I've made a little map for you, so you'll just be able to follow that along if you've used some colors similar to mine but if, then again, you know, if you chose your own colors, that's completely fine, it's gonna be great. All right, so you're gonna need about two skeins the size of all of these colored yarns, but you're gonna need four skeins of the contrasting yarn, the one that you're gonna use to connect all your squares together and for the border you need four skeins to that, and the exact yardages, the brand, all that, the colors, everything that I used is in your download, you'll have all that information once you download that, you can see exactly what I used, but don't feel limited to what I used you can, you know, certainly substitute, there's a bazillion different kinds of acrylic worsted weight yarns out there and you don't have to use acrylic, you could certainly use wool or something else too, so, don't feel restricted by my choices. The other thing is about, I wanted to make a special note about the gage. Now, if you guys have followed my lives before, you will know that I am always trying to get out of doing a gage swatch. So for this blanket, I actually suggest that you make a single crochet swatch that's just single crochet worked back and forth and turned rows like this and then count up your stitches and compare it to the gauge that I've given you in the download because the reason why is you may end up, if you're a looser crochet than I am, then you may end up running out of yarn because also, lemme point out, this is all I had left of these colors, this one was a little bit bigger, I've used some of this, but these size balls, this is all I had left from this blanket in these colors, from the yardage that I gave you, so that's gonna be a closer call if you crochet really loosely. I mean, there is enough here of a buffer, but just a note, if you don't check your gauge, just watch the yarn. The other thing is, is if you crochet tighter, you're gonna end up with a smaller blanket, of course, so I just want you to, you know, if you make the gauge swatch, this is the only gauge swatch that you really have to make for this whole blanket, that way there aren't gonna be any nasty surprises. But, having said that, if you are using a different kinda yarn, maybe you're using a bulky and you wanna make a very large blanket, that's okay, all you need to do is once you have finished a square, you can multiply up how many squares across and how many squares long, you will know about how big your blanket is going to be when it's finished. So, just another thing to keep in mind, your gauge does not need to exactly match my gauge, it's okay if it's a little bit off, it's all right, your blanket though, will be a little larger or a little smaller if it isn't the same as my gauge, so just something to think about. All right, so because this is a live event, I also just wanna remind you if there's anything you need me to go over again, if I'm unclear, if you have questions about the blanket overview or if you have questions about the specific part I'm working on, please just lemme know, put your questions in the chat box and I will try to get to them during this live event. So, all right, and Lizette greetings from Mexico. Wow, thanks for joining us, Lizette, I bet it's a lot warmer there than it is here, it's cold here, I'm trying to think spring, but it's still pretty darn cold, it's winter still in Minnesota. All right, so, and shall the Sanchez says, thank you for all the techniques and new stitches you share, awesome. Yes, this will be a really good one for learning different techniques, there's a lot of texture going on in this blanket, both color and, you know, bumpy nubby textures, really fun stitches, so even if you are like, I not gonna make a blanket, never gonna make a blanket, this is still like, it's gonna be a fun ride you guys, you'll be learning lots of different techniques if you join up with us, you will learn some things. All right, so let's talk about this blanket square that we're gonna be making today. So this one I called the bobble cable square, and lemme show you what it looks like, I'll just bring it in here. This is the square that we're gonna be working on today, so you can see there's three cables right here, and then there's a row of bobbles and row bobbles and actually it would be crocheted this way, like this, okay, so you're gonna work back and forth and turn rows and then as we get a little further on into the project, there's an edging of this main color, well, of the sort of dusty green color and then there's a complete edging of another color and then lastly, we'll do the edging of the whiter color. Okay, so I'm gonna show you how all this works, show you how to make all the stitches, I just wanted you to see where we were headed. All right, so, for the bobble cable square, we're gonna chain 21 stitches, so we'll start with a slip knot on our hook and I, oh, I should mention I'm using an H, which is a five millimeter hook, for mine, I wanted the feel of this blanket, I knew it was gonna be highly textured and therefore a little bit heavier and I did not want it to stretch out when I was, you know, carrying it around or wrapping it around myself, so I crocheted at a slightly tighter gauge than I probably normally would if it wasn't quite so just like heavily textured, so just, you know, keep that in mind, you know, when you crochet this up with whatever yarn you're using, you just wanna look at the square that you've made and kind of imagine it as a larger, heavier blanket and feel it and see if you think it's gonna be the right size hook for you. So, you know, you can certainly go up a hook size for a little bit more drape if it got really dense and it was hard to crochet or you can go down a hook size, you know, to a smaller hook if you feel like your stitches are gonna be a little bit too loose. All right, so we're chaining 21 chains, so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. All right, and so we're gonna begin by working into the back bump or the bottom of our chain, people call it different things, but if you look at the top of your chain, you're gonna see all those Vs kind of stacked up and facing this way, so you're gonna roll that over, so that's facing the table and you'll see all these little horizontal dashes, those are called the back bump, also called the back of the chain, there's lots of different names, that's where we're gonna be working across in this row. So we're gonna skip the first one, skip the first back bump, because that's gonna count as our turning chain and we're gonna work a single crochet into each of the other back bumps all the way across, so we're gonna insert our hook, yarn over, pull up loop, yarn over, pull through two, that's our first single crochet. Insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, there's another single crochet, do one more, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, all right, now we're just gonna continue working our single crochet all the way across our chain. One thing that I wanted to mention too is in your pattern download, you're gonna find that the directions the for each square is going to be written out, you know, written out with words but if you know me, you know that I'm a chart person, so I have charted every square in this blanket in its entirety, okay, so all of the squares are gonna have their own chart in the download with all of the stitches accounted for in the chart. So if you are more of a chart reader and not much of a written out pattern reader, then you also have that option, you'll be able to make this blanket from just the charts really. Charts are just such an awesome tool, if you are not a chart user, perhaps by the end of these tutorials you might become one, because I'm going to be referring to the charts a lot 'cause it helps me teach and it helps me keep track of where I'm at 'cause you can see the whole picture. All right, so we have worked one single crochet into each of those bottom bumps all the way across our row, so it looks like that and then we are going to chain one and turn, so we just chain one, turn like you're turning a page in a book and then we are gonna work a single crochet into each stitch across again. So when you do that, you're gonna skip that turning chain, which is right here, you never count the loop on your hook as a stitch. So this is a turning chain and then here's our next stitch, this is the first stitch of the row, so we're gonna work a single crochet there and into each stitch all the way across. And Lizette is saying they're having hot weather, this is in Mexico already, thanks for your tutorials, you are welcome Lizette, I'm so glad that you could join me. This is fun for me to do these tutorials because otherwise I'm just crocheting in my house by myself, you guys, so this is really nice to know that there's other people out there interested in the same kind of things that I'm working on and I learn so much every time I do one of these 'cause people ask questions and other people chime in with answers that I hadn't even thought of before, so this is a really good experience for me too. All right, if you are a newer to crochet, I would highly recommend, I should have said this at the beginning, I would highly recommend putting a stitch marker in the very first stitch you do of every row and the very last because that way, you're just, most of the problems that happen when you're a newer crocheter with the the edge being kinda ripley and bumpy is because you're either missing the last stitch or you're adding an extra stitch where it doesn't belong at one of the ends, so I would highly recommend putting a stitch marker here and putting a stitch marker there and it might seem silly 'cause you might think, well, I just stitched there, I don't need a stitch marker there but then once you chain your work and you turn, sometimes it can be confusing until you start to really learn what you're looking at. So, just do it for a couple of rows, humor me and you'll see and then once you're really comfortable with what you're looking at, then you don't have to use 'em anymore but it doesn't hurt just to add 'em. All right, so again, because this turning chain does not count as a stitch, we're not gonna be working into that, we're gonna work another single, this is row three, I should say, right here, we're gonna work a single crochet into that very first stitch and then after this it starts to get exciting, you guys. All right, I'm gonna bring in my chart, so lemme show you where we started in this chart and if you're not a chart user, you might be thinking, whoa, what in the world is going on there? But you can see it kind of looks like a picture of what we're making, you can see these are the cables here and these little balls, those are going to be our bobbles, okay, so it's just basically a map of where all the stitches go and how they relate to each other and what I want you to look at right now is we are just looking at this inside square, don't look at the purple, green, or red, just ignore that for now, we're just looking at the black and blue section of this chart, so these numbers on the side, that's gonna tell you what row you're working on, okay, here's row one, there's a number one right here, we worked, see these little plus signs across, just ignore this stitch that comes down, just don't look at that yet but just look at the little plus signs, they go all the way across, the little black plus signs all the way across. What that stands for is those are the single crochets that we worked on that first row, these little tiny ovals down here, those were the chains that where we first worked. All right, this is telling you the foundation chain begins here, this arrow, that's where we did our chain, we worked into the second chain from the hook, we did a single crochet all the way across, then we chained one and here's row number two, row number two is shown, you know, wherever the number is, that's where you start from, so if you see row number two, you start with the stitch that's right next to it. If you see number three, you're gonna start with this stitch and you're gonna be working in this direction, okay? So we're on number two and we've just worked all these little blue plus symbols that stands for single crochets, one in each stitch across. I know some of them are hard to see because they're kinda hiding back here underneath this big, long, crazy stitch, but they are there right next to it, you can just barely see them peeking out from behind, okay, we've worked a single crochet into each stitch all the way across that blue row there. I should also mention the blue rows, they stand for the wrong side rows in this particular pattern, so just so you know, it's written down here in the legend here too, so this says single crochet on the wrong side, that's the blue rows. All right, so we've worked row number one, row number two, we're working on row number three, so we've already done that first single crochet into the single crochet below and now here's where all the fun stuff starts. Okay, so these long stitches that have, it's sort of like a T with a little swoop dish swoop at the bottom there, and then like a little tiny hatch mark across, that is a front post double crochet, okay, it's right here, front post double crochet right there and the definitions to all these abbreviations, those are all in your patterns, so if you're looking at it and thinking, I'm not gonna remember that, it's okay, all the abbreviations are listed in your pattern download, so you'll have that to look at. All right, so back to row three, we've done our single crochet and now we're gonna do these front post double crochets and you can see the top of the stitches here, even with that single crochet but the bottom of the stitch goes way down here and it hooks around that first row of single crochet, so that's because we're gonna be working around the posts of that first row, every time you see those long stitches, we're gonna work down there. So, we are on row number three, we've done the first single crochet, now, instead of working our stitch right here, how we normally would, that would be the next stitch, we are going to work in the stitch below, so here's a stitch between my thumbs that is in the working row, here's the stitch directly below, that's the post we're gonna work around. So what I mean by that, when you're working a front post double crochet, that means it's similar to a regular double crochet where you yarn over to begin, so we're gonna yarn over, but instead of inserting your hook into the stitch, we're gonna insert it around the post of that stitch below, which is right here, here's the post, we're gonna insert our hook around the back of it right there. Okay, so just, lemme back up for a second, so you'll see we're skipping this first stitch here, we're working around the post of the second stitch in that row on the bottom there, we've already worked this stitch, so that stitch kinda corresponds with this one, now we're working around the post of the next stitch, okay, so we yarn over, insert a hook from right to left around the back or if you're a left-handed crocheter, you're gonna insert your hook from left to right around the back. So here's a a tip for left-handed crocheters too, if you're a left-handed crocheter, make a reverse image copy of all of the charts for the whole blanket, because you're going to be reading all your charts from left to right how you normally crochet, you crochet from left to right if you're a lefty. So, if you make a reverse image copy and then you can watch me in a mirror, then I will look like I'm doing exactly the same thing you're doing. I know that that can be a very frustrating thing if you're a left-handed crocheter because so many crocheters who are demonstrating things are right-handed like myself and it can be hard to just flip-flop that in your brain, so. All right, so back to this postage, we inserted our hook around the post, then we're gonna yarn over and we're gonna draw that loop around the back of the post and to the front and then we're gonna yarn over and then we're gonna pull through two and then we're gonna yarn over and pull through two, that completes the first front post double crochet, it was worked into that first row of single crochets that we made. Now you can see from this chart, here's the one that we just did, now we're gonna do one, two, three more, okay, and those three are just worked into the next three single crochets in that same bottom row there. So we yarn over, insert our hook around the next stitch, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two yarn over, pull through two. All right, we've got two, now we're gonna do two more. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, one more time, yarn over, insert around that post, yarn over, pull your loop up, yarn over, pull through two yarn over, pull through two. So now we have four front post double crochets, one, two, three, four, that are all connected to that very first row of single crochets down below. So we are going to be skipping all of the stitches behind those. Now you can see when I flip this forward, those post stitches, because they're anchored around the posts, it's leaving the top of those next four stitches free. Well, we are going to ignore all four of those, okay, so we're gonna ignore this one, this one, this one, and this one, so we're skipping four, and then we're gonna work the following stitch right there, okay? So the next stitch is just a single crochet, so we insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two. All right, so now we've got a single crochet, four front post double crochets, we skip the four corresponding stitches behind, then we work to single crochet just into that working row, okay, we're not working below anymore for that stitch anyway, so we're gonna do two more single crochets into the working row one and two. Now we're gonna repeat this situation, we're gonna work four more front post double crochets. So if it helps to figure out where your next one goes, we've worked around this post and then we worked three more stitches, so one, two, three, those corresponded these three stitches, so this would be the next stitch we work around, so we're gonna insert our hook right there. So we yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, so there's our first of those three front post double crochets, let's do three more just right in a row, one, two, and three. All right, and then we are going to skip the four stitches behind there, one, two, three and four, and then we're gonna work three single crochets in the working row, we've already done this, this is what we did right after we worked that first batch of post stitches, so we worked three, and now we are going to work four more post stitches in the row below. So we're skipping one, two, three posts in that first row from where our last post stitch was made, okay, so there's our last post stitch, we're not gonna work around that one, that one, or that one, but we're gonna work around the next one. One, two, three, and four, okay, and again, because we already worked into those posts, we're skipping all the corresponding tops of the stitches behind, so one, two, three, four, and we are going to work a single crochet into that very last stitch of the row, just like that. So this is what we have so far, we've got a group of from post double crochet, a little group of single crochet from post double crochet, single crochet from post double crochet with one single crochet on each end there. So we've reached the end and we're gonna yarn over, turn our work just like you're turning a page in a book, and we are going to single crochet all the way across into each stitch. No funny business on this row, so we are just working into that last row that we made, we are ignoring these tops of stitches, we're never gonna work into those on this square, okay? So just you can flip them forward outta the way, but just ignore them and we're just gonna work all the way across working those single crochets all the way across our row. I remember the first time that I ever worked cables in crochet, I had already worked cables in knitting, I knew how that worked, but I just didn't understand how you could do that in crochet and when I did it, I thought, oh my gosh, that isn't as hard as I thought it would be. So I hope that if there's any new cable crocheters out there, I hope you guys have the same reaction to this, it's not as tricky as, once you understand where your hook is supposed to go, it's really not that tricky. All right, so we've worked single crochet all the way across the wrong side rows and we've just worked row four and now we're working row five. So, this row has front post treble crochets and the way that you can tell the difference in the chart between double crochets and treble crochets, treble crochets have two little hash marks through their stem there, see those two, whereas the double crochets only have one. Lemme show you down here, so, here's a treble crochet, it's got those two little marks, the double crochets only have one. And you might be thinking, what's the deal with those weird gray ones? So that is just a regular treble crochet, but it's showing you, it is sitting behind these stitches because we're gonna start crossing over our stitches, we're gonna be working them out of order and you need to know which stitch is sitting on top of the other stitches, 'cause it could be the other way around but in this pattern, I made it the easy way so that you're gonna be working your trebles when you're crossing over your stitches, you're just gonna be working in front of the stitches you've just made, all right, if that doesn't make make sense to you, that is completely fine, I'm gonna show you how we do it. All right, so we're here on row five, we're gonna work a single crochet into the first stitch, then we're gonna skip these two stitches, those two are the single crochet from the working row, we're gonna skip those and we're gonna work a front post treble crochet around the posts of the next two post stitches below. Now if you were just like, ah, I don't understand, that's okay, that's okay, 'cause you'll see how this works, it's not as tricky as that mouthful of words I just spewed. All right, so we're gonna do a single crochet into that first stitch and now to do a front post treble crochet, we're gonna yarn over twice, we're gonna skip these two post stitches and we're gonna work right around this next post. All right, so we've yarned over twice for our front post treble crochet, we're gonna insert our hook underneath that stitch under the post, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, all right, that's what we have, see how it's leaning over there? It's reaching for that stitch. Now we're gonna do the same thing in the next stitch, so yarn over twice and we're gonna insert our hook underneath that post, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, that's another front post treble crochet. So what we've worked right now are the two gray stitches here. So you can see those are the gray stitches, so these are the black stitches, so that means the black stitches are sitting on top of the gray stitches. So we're gonna work two more front post treble crochets reaching back to those two posts that we already skipped and they're gonna be sitting right on top of these stitches that we made. So to do that, we'll yarn over twice 'cause it's a treble crochet and now we're going to insert our hook from a right to left, or if you're a left-handed crocheter, from left to right around that first post that we skipped right there. So yarn over twice, insert from right to left, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over twice, and now we're gonna work that second stitch post, sorry, the second post that we skipped, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two. Now you can see how we just work those two post stitches and they are sitting on top of the other post stitches that we worked from down below there. All right, so we're skipping all this business back here, you're not gonna be working into any of that and then we are gonna work, so you still have to skip those four, one, two, three, four, and you're gonna work a single crochet into the next stitch and then you're gonna work a bobble into the following stitch. So in this pattern, the way that we make our bobbles is gonna be, we're gonna be making sort of like four double crochets, but we're not finishing any of them and then we're gonna yarn over and pull through all of it. So we'll yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two and stop, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two and stop. Okay, we've done it twice, now we're gonna do it three more times, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two and stop, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two and stop, one more time. And so at this point you should have six loops on your hook, which might seem weird 'cause we were just doing five sort of partially made stitches, but that's because we already had a loop to begin with on our hook, okay? So then we're gonna yarn over and pull through all six loops just like that and then we're gonna make a single crochet into the next stitch and this is what really makes that bobble pop. So try to make this stitch kind of tightly, there's our single crochet, see how it just made that bobble pop out? If you're having some problems and your bobbles doing this, just use your finger and poke it like that and then you have a nice round bobble. All right, so we've made it across to this next post section and we're gonna repeat what we already did. So we're going to do a front post treble crochet here and here, and then we're gonna go back and do one here and here. All right, so we're working in underneath that third post, one, two, three, yarn over twice, and one, two, three, all right, so we've worked front post treble crochets over here, now we're gonna work in front of the stitches we just made, yarn over twice and we're going from right to left or if you're a lefty, left to right, there's one front post treble crochet, yarn over twice, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, all right, so that's our cable cross there and then we're going to skip one, two, three, four of the stitches in the working row and make a single crochet into the following stitch. Now we're gonna make that same bobble we already made. So we'll yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two, okay, we're gonna do that until we have six loops on our hook right there, we're gonna yarn over, pull through everything, then we're gonna make a single crochet in the next stitch, poke that bobble forward if you need to and then we're gonna do one more of the cable crossing, so we're skipping the first two posts and we're working around the third and then the fourth posts. All right, now we're gonna go back and catch that first post that we skipped and the second post. All right, and then to finish this row, we're skipping those four stitches behind and then we're gonna place a single crochet into that last stitch of the row like that. Okay, so now we're going to chain one and turn, and we're gonna work single crochets all the way across. And right now we have learned most of what you need to know for the square there's a lot of repeats and then there's some borders and neither of those things are very tricky to do, so, I'm gonna show you the next row just so that you understand how the cable works and then I will skip ahead and show you the border. All right, we have almost reached the end of our row, so I'm working that wrong side row, I'm working this blue row, which would be row six all the way across to here, now we're working row seven, you can see when you look at the chart, you're gonna be working a single crochet into the first stitch, see that happens all the way on the edge of each, you know, all the way up the edge, there's a single crochet to begin and a single crochet to end. So in row seven, we're gonna do a single crochet, and then we're gonna do a front post double crochet into the post below, so we're not crossing these anymore in this row, okay, we're gonna do that on every other row basically, or every other right side row I should say. So, we're gonna chain one and turn, so we're looking at the right side of our work, we're gonna place that first single crochet into the single crochet and now we're gonna work front post double crochets into the posts from below. Now it might be a little bit hard to see those posts, especially the ones that are behind, but I find if you kinda spread this out a little bit, then you can really see where those posts are, especially this one, this one likes to hide, see how you can kinda spread it apart and really examine where you're putting your hook. So we're gonna yarn over, insert our hook around that post, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over pull through two, there's the first front post double crochet of row seven. Here's the second one, we yarn over, insert our hook around that post, yarn over, pull up loop, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over pull through two, and then there's two more, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two, and one more. All right, so that kind of helps that pull those post stitches from behind into the right area and you can see it's crossing here down below, but these are going straight up from where it had crossed. Now we're going to work, we're gonna skip those same four stitch as we always skip when we do posts one, two, three, four, and then we're gonna do three single crochets, one, two, three. All right, now we're gonna gonna repeat that, so we're gonna work from post double crochets into all the posts below, one, two, three, four, we're gonna skip those four stitches, one, two, three, four, from the working row and then we're gonna do three single crochets, one, two, three, all right, and we're gonna do the same thing, front post double crochets into that row below, or I should say not the row below, but the post stitches below. So once you set up those initial post stitches when you're working across row three, once you get those all set up, it's much easier to know where to put your posts because your post stitches go into previous post stitches from, you know, two rows below, every right side row has a post stitch in it, so, or sections of post stitches I should say. All right, so we've worked all the way across row seven and so then we would chain one and work on the wrong side all the way across and then when we work row eight, you can see, or sorry, that would be row eight, and then when we work row nine, we're gonna be crossing those stitches again, so that's exactly the same as row five, all right, same exact thing. So you're just gonna continue working back and forth following the chart or following your instructions until you get to, let's see, row 23, which is ending with the front post double crochet, is not a crossing one, but that is the last front post double crochet row that's after you already have five bobbles. So you'll be able to see those really easily, those five bobbles and then you'll do one more row across and then you're gonna fasten off over here, that's what this little triangle empty triangle is for, it's to tell you you're gonna cut your yarn and fasten off right there. So lemme show you what all that looks like, here we go, so we have worked one, two, three, four, five bobbles and then this last row of front post double crochets, three single crochets, front post double crochets, single crochets, front post double crochets and we have ended right here, that corner, then we just cut our yarn, we just need a long enough tail so that you can weave it in. All right, so we're gonna fast enough. The next thing we're gonna talk about is how to make this border, we're gonna do a border of a contrasting color, you can see right here we've got this contrasting color row but I realized when I was working on this, you can't get really super neat and tidy stitches when you're working them into your row ends, it's not the same as when you're working into a stitch that's already there and I really wanted this to be neat and tidy all the way around, so what I ended up doing was I made a partial round, like a setup edging that goes from here across here and down here in the same color as the main square is made in, so that way, you know, if your stitches are a little messy, you won't see it because it's the same color. So we're gonna start that down here in this corner and actually in the instructions, I tell you to put a stitch marker in this stitch so you will know where to start, so we are just gonna pull up a loop of this main color, the same color as we use to make the stitch, okay, and then we'll chain one that doesn't count as anything, that's just to kinda anchor our work and now we are going to work single crochet all along this edge. So if you've never worked into your row ends before, that's okay, I'm gonna show you how to do it, there is an extra video on the Creative Crochet Corner website if you wanna see that in a little bit more detail but what we're gonna do here is we're gonna divide this in half, so I'm gonna fold this and put a stitch marker at the halfway point, you can also just eyeball it if you're pretty good eyeballer and then we are going to be working 20 stitches across the whole length of it, so we're gonna work 10 stitches here and 10 stitches here, so the reason I divided it is that so you can see if you're on track, once you're getting close to here, you should have your 10 stitches, that way, you know you're not putting too many stitches or too few stitches in this section 'cause you want it to be as even as you can. All right, so we've already pulled up our loop there in chain one, we're gonna work right into that same corner and we're gonna do a single crochet, pulling up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, there's our first stitch, and we're gonna do nine more before we get to that marker. So when you do this, there's no specific spot you have to put your hook, you just have to look for a place where it looks good. So you might think as you're working along, oh, there's a large hole there, I should fill that in with a stitch but oftentimes if you work into a large hole, it makes the hole bigger, lemme show you what I mean. So here's a nice tight hole right here, so you can add, put your crochet hook through there and add a stitch into that spot and it doesn't make a big hole there, but one, two, three, four, five, but if you're stitching along and say this hole is a little bigger here, you might think, oh, I'll just make my stitch right there, perfect like that and see what happens is it makes your hole bigger, all right, so avoid the larger holes, it's kinda counter counterintuitive, but you'll see as you work and try to fit your hook into the tighter spaces, and that will help your stitches look a little more even. All right, we're at six and that's good 'cause we're a little over halfway, seven, eight, nine, and 10. All right, so we can remove our stitch marker and we are going to work 10 single crochets across the next section, so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10 right into that corner space. And then we are going to rotate our work this way to keep working and we're gonna work one stitch into each stitch across, so those stitches are already made, it's easy to do, you're just doing one single crochet into each of those 20 stitches, one, two, three, you don't actually have to count them, sometimes I just find myself counting just without any reason to count, that's just my brain just automatically does that now, it's been reprogrammed you guys, are you guys counters? I wanna know, let me know in the chat if you guys constantly count things or if you hate counting. I know, I feel like there's two camps of crocheters, the ones that just can't help it and just count anyway and the crocheters that are just like, ugh, I can't, I don't wanna count. All right, we've almost made it to the end, all right, so when you get to that corner, you're just going to rotate your work again, this whole time we're just keeping the same side facing, and we're gonna repeat what we already did on that first side, okay? So you're gonna divide this in half with a stitch marker and we're 10 stitches here and 10 stitches here, still working in single crochet and we've reached a point where we had fastened off our yarn, we can go ahead and lay that along that top edge and then we can crochet over it and that'll give us one less end to weave in 'cause this blanket has quite a few ends so I'll try to give you guys some tips on how to, like where you can crochet over things to make it a little bit easier. All right, we've got four five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, and then we're gonna remove that stitch marker. Oh, see, I made that whole little big there, I'm gonna go back and fix that. There we go, that's a little better. Now we're gonna do 10 more, one, two, three, four, five, that's a good checkpoint, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10, all right, and then we just fasten off right here. Just need long enough tail so that you can weave it in later, okay? So what we did was we just worked around here, here, and here just to sort of make a nice, neat and tidy edge so when we crochet our contrasting color border around there, it's gonna look really good. All right, so you'll take your contrasting color and we are going to start here working along the bottom row, okay, so this was the top of our work, we're gonna start down here in this corner, so I'm gonna turn it, and lemme just point out on this chart, this chart will tell you where to add your yarn and where to fasten off, so here, right here, begin the setup partial round here that was the round that we just did, we worked across here, there, and there, these purple stitches and then we fastened off. Now we are going to add yarn here and we are gonna work one single crochet into each stitch all the way around. And that might seem very strange to those of you who have worked squares before that were not increasing at the corners here, the reason is I tried really hard to get all of these squares so that they would have exactly the same amount of stitches all the way around them, like they're very different stitch patterns, well, lemme just explain what I'm doing here, insert your hook into that first stitch, pull up a loop, chain one, not just to anchor it, okay, just to join your yarn and now we're gonna do it a single crochet into each stitch all the way around so there's a single crochet and to each stitch all the way around. So back to what I was saying, I tried really hard to make it so that all of the squares would have the same amount of stitches along each edge and because these squares are completely different stitch patterns, they're slightly different gauges because of, you know, the way the stitches interact with each other, so it's just one of those things where you just need to block your pieces a little bit to make them a little bit more square at those corners if they're a little bit rounded, you can see in the picture on the front of your download that it does have a little bit of a curved corner to it, if that really bothers you, you can do sort of a chain two in that corner or something else but then you might end up with a little tiny hole where all of your corners match up in your Afghan but maybe that's not a big deal to you either, so. All right, so lemme check and see if I have 20 stitches, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and here's the last stitch, 20, and then we just rotate and now these are the stitches we added to make that nice border and we're just gonna work one stitch into each stitch around. So like I was saying, you know, normally when you're crocheting around the edges of a square, you would do an increase at each of the corners and that would make it light lay flat and so you can see this wants to curl up just a little bit, but on the next two rounds we're gonna be adding increases so that's gonna balance that out a little bit and then a little bit of blocking will take care of that. So if that's happening to you, if it's kinda curling up in your thinking, oh no, I'm kinda doubting her, this is the way that I made it to make it a little bit easier for adding your pieces together later but you could add more stitches into the corner and then when you go to sew all of your blocks together, then you can just line them up next to each other, pin them next to each other, and don't sew them together with a one-to-one ratio of one square to another square 'cause if you add those increases in the corners to some of these, you're not going to necessarily going to have the same amount of stitches on each side of each square, if that makes any sense. All right, so, you're just working one of those contrasting stitches all the way around it and you can see, because we added those stitches to the side, it looks really neat and tidy here, there's really no difference between these stitches and these stitches, they look really nice. So that's a good little trick you can apply to other projects too if you're adding a different color to something to just do a border of the same main color before you add your contrasting color. All right, so we're just fast forwarding here a little bit, and we've worked almost all the way around, I'm gonna add the last couple of stitches here, one and two, okay, so we've worked that whole round of the contrast stitches, then we're going to insert our hook into that top of that very first stitch, yarn over, pull through and pull through to slip stitch to join that together and then we'll just cut our yarn, yarn over and pull through, all right. All right, so we just have the contrasting border left and so if you guys have any questions about what I've been doing so far, other questions, let me know, put them in the chat so I know that I need to be more clear about something or answer another question. All right, so this is my contrasting color, and you can tell when you look at this chart, we are going to join our contrasting color right here to that very same stitch where we just slip stitched to that was the first stitch of that last round, we had worked this green round here, and now we're working the red round, so the red round, there's two rounds of single crochet, and we are going to be doing increases at each corner. If you take a look at this chart, there's a single crochet here and a single crochet here, actually, lemme show you so it's right side up to you guys. So here's a single crochet in that contrasting border, and then there's two single crochets up above it, so what that means when you see that, that means there's a single crochet and then another single crochet that both go into that stitch, so when you're looking at this chart, when you've got those extra stitches, you'll know that you're doing your increases there. But, I mean, this is all written out as well, if it's easier for you to just read the directions, that's fine too, or a little combination of both. So we're gonna pull up a loop in that very first stitch where we slip stitch two, and we're gonna chain one that doesn't count as anything, that's just to anchor our yarn and now we're gonna do a single crochet into each stitch around, actually, but we have to do, oh wait, I gotta back up. I just finished saying that we're doing increases in this round, which I forgot, all right, so we did our first single crochet into that first stitch of the round, after we joined our yarn, we did a single crochet there, and we're gonna add a second single crochet into that same stitch, okay? So there's an increase right there. Now we are gonna work across until we get to the next corner, so that would be 18 stitches where we're just working one single crochet into each of the next 18 stitches there. All right, we're almost to the next corner, and then we're gonna do another set of increases, we're gonna do an increase followed by another increase, two increases in a row. All right, let's see, there's our first two single crochets, so we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, so this is the stitch where we need to put two stitches, so we've already done one, we're gonna do a second single crochet, okay, 'cause we're at the corner, and then two single crochets into the following stitch one and two and because we're doing these increases, it helps work around the edge, it makes it a little wider, so that way it's not flipping up like this, like it kinda was on the last round a little bit there. All right, so we're working 18 more stitches, one single crochet into each stitch and then in the following two stitches, we're gonna do an increase, an increase all that means is you're doing more than one stitch into a stitch, so in this case, because we're working in single crochet, we're doing two single crochets into that next stitch, that's just an what increase means, I get a lot of questions about that. All right, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, so there's two stitches here, and then two stitches into the next stitch as well. All right, so you would just continue working this border all the way around, this is just the first of two rounds of single crochet, but they're exactly the same, so you'll work all the way around, slip stitch to join, so that just means you slip stitch into the top of that first stitch, then you chain one, and then you work into the same stitch that you slip stitched into and then you're gonna do two single crochets into that first stitch, work across to the next corner, and then you're gonna do two increases, okay, so when you're looking at this, if you see your increases, there's two stitches right here going into one stitch and two stitches right here going into one stitch. The place where you're gonna put your increases are the two stitches that right next to each other, okay? So that would be the second stitch of the first increase, and then the following stitch, so you're gonna do another increase there in your next round, and then you're gonna join at the end, so you will have two rounds of your contrasting color, and when you fasten that off, fasten off with a longer yarn tail, unless you know for sure that you want to use, unless you want to slip stitch or crochet all of your squares together at the end, if you've already made blankets like this before and you know what I'm talking about, and you're like, yeah, I'm not gonna sew that, I'm just not gonna sew those pieces together, I'm gonna crochet them together, then you can fasten off with a shorter tail because then you'll just weave in all of your ends and then later on, we will crochet those pieces together. On my blanket, I actually whip stitched all the pieces together instead of crocheting them together, because I just found it easier to deal with matching up the corners and all that stuff, it just seems simpler to me but everybody has, you know, different opinions on how they like to put these types of things together, so if you think you might want to sew it together, leave yourself along yarn tail, because that'll give you something to start stitching with, you know, later when we sew all these squares together. So, you're not gonna be sewing any of these pieces together until the very end when we have all of our squares, because there's a certain layout where we kinda intersperse them and also, I would also recommend, maybe this sounds strange, but I would wait to block your pieces until the end. If you think to yourself, I don't think that's gonna work for me, I think I really need to block them right away, because otherwise I'm not gonna wanna block like 30 squares, that's fine, you can block them, the only drawback to that is that if you're working on these and then you have a square that's just slightly bigger or slightly smaller, and then you wanna block it to the size of the other squares, you're not gonna know that until you have one of every square completed, they should be pretty similar in size, that's how I design them, that's what worked for me, I use the same hook throughout this entire project and tried to make it work out so that all the squares would be the same, but there is a little tiny bit of variance here and there, you may find, like some of my squares are about, you know, a quarter of an inch wider in one direction than a different stitch pattern, you know, and that's okay, it's to be expected, you know, we're not machines, right? So, it might help you to wait until pretty much the very end, or at least until you have one block completed of each type, you know, of each type of stitch pattern to know if they're all gonna be, you know, the same size or if you have to kind of stretch one or smush one in, or whatever you need to do to get them to block to the same size. So, it's just a little tip for the very end, all right, it looks like we don't have any more questions, but I wanna let you guys know, I'm very excited you're here, I hope you come back for all the rest of the blocks that we're gonna be working on, I'm very excited to teach this, I'm excited for my first crochet along, I hope you guys are excited too, probably a lot of you have have done this many more times than me, which is zero, but yeah, I hope to see you guys back here again in about a month, and we'll be working on our blankets together, it's gonna be super fun, thanks so much for joining me, bye.