A Fourth Type of Join-As-You-Go?

You may have noticed that I am someone who is very fascinated by crochet methods that create different effects while being ostensibly the same.

Like my investigation of the four way you can work into a chain. [HERE]

Such recently has been by interest in the Join-As-You-Go method of joining Granny Squares.

I shared with you three different methods of performing this.

The method that seems to be most common.

The method I have been using lately.

 

and another method that I found suggested by Edie Eckman.

For the first method you insert the hook from the right side through the chain gap.

and pick up the yarn from below before making a slip stitch.

For my more recent method

you place wrong sides together and insert the hook from the wrong side before picking up the yarn and making the slip stitch.

Edie Eckman drops the loop off the hook, before inserting the hook from the right side of the other square

and pulling the loop through the gap.

only then does she pick up the yarn and make a slip stitch.

Now you may wonder why I care about which method to use.

Well normally it doesn’t matter too much but when making my Celtic Knot Granny Blanket.

I didn’t want the background colour to appear to be overlapping the knot or indeed the strips that were going under another to appear over it. So I went to great lengths to join the squares in an order that prevented this happening.

If I could find a method which was as neutral, as when squares are joined invisibly through the back loops, this could make life easier.

I have found a method that I think is almost invisible.

The first method pictured is probably the one that shows least so I adapted it a little by threading my hook through the chain itself instead of the gap.

Then as before you pull up the yarn from below

to make the slip stitch.

The first three trebles (US dcs) are added then the hook is inserted through the chain of the next gap.

and so the process is repeated until you get to the other corner.

This produces this effect.

which preserves a sense of continuity of colour along the edges of both squares and so while not entirely symmetrical is at first sight almost equal.

I think I need to see how it works out in practice on a larger project.

The above squares were made in Scheepjes Cahlista because I thought that it is easier to see what is going on with a cotton yarn rather than an acrylic one.

For a comparison: here are all four methods in one picture.