Wintery Mix

We (husband and I) were supposed to be singing in a concert right now, the last of three with our local community chorus. However we got a call around mid-day to say the concert was being postponed because of the lovely weather we're having which has made driving hazardous, and leaving the house unappealing.

In an ideal world this would mean I could curl up on the couch and get going with my rippling. In the real world -- the kitchen is a disaster area; all our laundry baskets (all four) are full of clean clothes that need putting away; the washing machine has a load of diapers in it that need attention; housework, housework, blah. Also the 9 month old little girl who lives with us likes to get attention and while her daddy is of course also home he's currently fighting off a low blood sugar attack and has things he wants/needs to do too so mummy's "it" as usual. Sigh.

Good news is that I believe I have decided on the ripple pattern to use. I got some very helpful comments at my post on the Ripple-Along blog. I took a look at patterns online suggested by others, and a few more I came across myself. Unfortunately husband decided to try and back-up his computer so I couldn't print anything out to bring in the car with me. So I brought the crochet booklet I had, and studied Jess's comment which helped me understand the mechanics of ripples vs. zigzags and then did some experimenting on the car ride. You can see the two swatches I came up with on the left. They're basically the same width but have different increase/decrease combinations and methods. Maybe I'll try and write them down at some point but I don't really speak crochetpattern... Anyway, I believe I'm going to go with the bottom pattern which doesn't have holes where the decreases happen and is more of a wavy ripple effect which is what I was looking for. Now I just have to decide how wide and get going with the crochet hook!