Craft Smarter in the New Year 2019: Color Blending 2 – Linen Stitch (crochet)

Craft Smarter in the New Year

Welcome to the next post in our Craft Smarter in the New Year series on Color Blending!

How Color Blending is Different in Crochet

Crochet is perfect for color blending because of its natural ability to crochet in the row below. Doing this makes transitioning from one color to the next even that much more comfortable to the eye because the colors are together.

Yarn and Hook

I’m using Valley Yarns Northampton (a worsted weight yarn) and a G hook. The image below shows knitting, but the colors are the same!

From light to dark (bottom to top), I’m using:

CC1: Raspberry Heather (26)

CC2: Dahlia (21)

CC3: Merlot Heather (27)

CC4: Amethyst (19)

How to Work the Linen Stitch

You can work a linen stitch using any stitch desired (single crochet, half-double crochet, double crochet, even treble crochet). We’ve worked this sample using single crochet (sc).

Start: Chain an even number of stitches.

Row 1: Ch2, sk ch, *sc in ch, ch1, sk ch, rep from * until 1 st rem, sc, turn.

Row 2: Ch2, sk sc, *sc in ch sp, ch1, sk sc, rep from * until only beg ch2 rem, sc into 2nd ch, turn.

Repeat Row 2 until end.

Chart

We’re using new charting software for the crochet charts so let me know what you think. I prefer charts over written instructions, so this makes sense to me – but you all are the experts. And, if you don’t like this then let me know as well because charts are always extra effort and I don’t want to go through the effort if they’re not helpful.

How Many Rows?

We did the swatch working 2 rows each. You can work any number of rows per color, so this is up to you, the yarn and the hook size.

As always, when in doubt, swatch.

Craft Smarter in the New Year

This post is part of our Craft Smarter in the New Year Series. We’re covering both knitting and crochet, and here are the posts we have in mind:

1. Purl Stitch (knitting)
2. Linen Stitch (crochet)
3. Slipped Stitches (knitting)
4. Spike Stitch (crochet)
5. Garter Stitch (knitting)
6. Shell Stitch (crochet)
7. Color Introduction (knitting)
8. Lemon Peel Stitch (crochet)
9. Holding 2 Colors Together (both knitting and crochet)

We also kicked off this series with a post on color choices and included a bunch of different resources for you to get the juices flowing!

Our Sponsor

And of course, a special thanks to our yarn sponsor, Webs, for donating the yarn for this series. We couldn’t have done it without you – plus their Valley Yarns Line is FABULOUS. I highly recommend them.