I learned to crochet before I learned to knit around 2 years ago, taught by an old friend who gave me one of her ripple blankets she had made a long time ago (I’ll have to get it out tomorrow and take a picture of it). I’ve tried to resist all the rippling craze around the blogs, mostly because crocheting aggravates my mild carpal tunnel much more than knitting does. I do, however, want an afghan. I made my daughter a chunky ripple blanket a few years ago and enjoyed making it.

I actually did some swatching tonight–the yarn, Red Heart Super Soft (must be able to wash afghans), calls for an I hook, but I’m looking for a more compact look, like the one my friend made, so I went down to an H and that was much more what I was looking for. I was surprised how quickly I popped right back into the swing of it, a little reminder on which stitch to start in after a turn, a refresher on the dc2tog and I was on my way. I’m going to use a ridged double crochet ripple pattern that I picked up from a stitch dictionary–two rows per color, ridges on the color change row.

UNLESS–I’m going to swatch some knitted ripple patterns first…for the sake of the carpal tunnel issues. Although a blanket size row of purling doesn’t inspire me much! Although I did find a feather and fan pattern that would have few all purl rows–I’ll swatch it tomorrow. Whether I knit it or crochet it, it will take me a loooong time, I don’t knit enough to really make large projects into finished objects very often, but that doesn’t seem to stop me from starting them. I did stop my log cabin afghan as it just wasn’t doing it for me, I put the square away in case I ever want to figure out how to make it into a pillow or something. So once I start this, I’ll still have the three long term projects–an afghan, a sweater, and a lace shawl.

Before I do anything other than swatch, I need to finish a little 5×5 square to send in for a blanket for Jennifer. Given I have a major project to finish up for college this weekend, that’s probably about all I’ll manage.