What I love about 12"

Sometimes 6" just isn't enough, you just have to go all out for 12", you can get much more variation with 12".

As mentioned in my first post on squares, this one would be about 12" squares ( why, what else were you thinking of?)

There are many many patterns to choose from for 12" squares on the internet.  You could make a traditional granny as discussed last time and keep doing rounds until you reach 12" or you could decide to get adventurous and try something new.
As most of the free patterns are American therefore use American terminology, this has to be remembered when making stitches otherwise the pattern will not work.

Conversion Table

slip stitch (same in UK and US)

dc (double crochet) UK - sc (single crochet) US

htr (half treble) UK - hdc ( half double crochet) US

tr (treble crochet) UK - dc (double crochet) US

dtr (double treble) UK - tr (treble crochet) US

trtr (triple treble) UK - dtr (double treble) US

UK terminology I believe is based on the number of moves it takes to complete a stitch and US terminology refers to the number of loops on hook before inserting hook through to pull yarn and complete stitch.

Right...back to 12" squares, I also take part in another Ravelry group swap called Bakers Dozen.  This is where groups of 13 people, over the course of a year (13 months actually) makes squares for each other in the group.  Each member if the group has their own month when they dont make a square but instead will receive a square from each of the other 12 members.

Here are some of the squares I received when it was my month (Sept)

I think my 12" squares will also be used with 6" squares for that camping blanket that I mentioned.

I fell behind with some of my squares for this group but have no got them done, they just need to be posted off.

This purple one is for Novemeber and the pattern can be found here

These 2 squares were for December, an extra one was done for a birthday (can you guess what country the recipient might live in from the second square ?)

This is January's square and the pattern can be found here

And as I have caught with myself I decided to do February's square while I was on a roll, the pattern for this square can be found here

Another thing to bear in mind with American patterns is that they tend to use yarn that is classed as 'worsted weight'.  The nearest equivalent we have in the UK is Aran weight but the US has a much wider range of colours in this weight so if you plan on using DK yarn (in the US this is classed as light worsted or even 3), more rows of pattern are generally needed to bring up to 12".

There you go, 12" squares, the difference between UK and US terminology, yarn weights and some examples of patterns and where they can be found....see you soon.