When I posed
Adventures in Neckdom, I asked if anyone knew a standard way to join an fsc chain to another piece of crochet because my connector row was just sorta floating out there.
As you can see in the photo above from that post.
Karin of
Make By K left THREE suggestions for dealing with this issue in the comments. One of them is the one I'd already tried - using the end yarn to weave a fake attaching stitch. I wasn't super-thrilled about how it looked.
The next suggestion was to make the next row's stitch into the last (aka floating) fsc to help anchor it. Oh, that sounded pretty good. But it still wasn't exactly what I was looking for.
The third one sounded totally impossible. I had to read it several times just to figure out what she was saying:
why are you leaving a fsc tail in the first place? assuming that's the third row of the "back" pieces, would it work to do just TWO rows on the "left back" and bind off, then complete the THREE rows on the "right back", fsc over to the "left back," and do the third row of the "left back"? and that would put your yarn right where it needs to be to start the next row at A...
OK ... she's saying that I should just make the fsc row as a part of the third row without fastening off on either the left or right back pieces. So smart!
Once I wrapped my head around it, it seemed like the obvious answer! But how!?! I was going from a row that was "double crochet tall" to a "single crochet tall" fsc row and then switching back to a "double crochet tall" row.
To complicate matters, the fsc is attached to the TOP of the "double crochet tall" row. How in the world would that work? Normally, when you're making a crochet row, the bottom of the row is a straight line and the top line goes up and down based on the height of your stitches, not the other way around.
After much tangling, attaching, yarning-overing, and whatnot, I totally figured it out! And I love it! Yay yay yay! The top row in green that goes all the way across starts on the left and goes to the right. Since it was a test, I just made 10 fsc in between the back pieces.
Here's a close up. Here's what I did:
1) complete last fsc stitch
2) do the link-part of an fsc (put hook through last fsc's chain (three loops on hook), yo (yarn over), pull through 2 loops)
3) yo
4) go through end loop and the top of the first stitch of the other crochet piece
5) yo
6) pull through the end loop and stitch of other crochet piece
7) yo
8) pull through two loops
9) yo
10) pull through three loops to complete double crochet
11) yell, "Holy sh*t! It worked!"
This is totally going on the tutorial list. It needs explanation and a video to be clear, I think. I'm getting pretty close to earning my Ph.D in fsc. Ha! Should I start signing my name "Alice Merlino, FSC Ph.D"? It looks official, doesn't it!?
Big thanks to Karin, who prodded me to try this. I really didn't think it would work. My brain just kept saying, "No way!" Her encouragement made a difference.
THANKS, KARIN! I totally owe you. :)