Work off?

[Marian Amos]

Here are the puzzling directions:  ‘Work off 1 treble, 1 double 1 treble off together’

I know, of course, what double and treble crochets are, but what does it mean by ‘work off’ and ‘off together?’

[Granny Square]

Welcome to the 'ville!  Ignore the word 'off'.  (Sounds a little like knitting, as in 'bind off'; when you bind off, you combine stitches and "work them off" your needle 1 at a time until there is only 1 stitch left on your needle, then you cut the yarn, pull the yarn tail thru that last stitch on the needle, take the needle out  & weave in the end.)

Does the pattern say where to do this?  I see 2 possibilities - One, You could make a sort of 'decrease', where you make a partial tr in the first stitch, a partial dc in the second st, and partial treble in the third st, then YO and pull thru all the loops on your hook to combine them.  Is this in a spot where you would decrease to shape the fabric, like working a hat from the brim up, and having to narrow it down for the crown?  Or is in in an area of fabric that is meant to be flat - if so, there might be chains on either side of this, so it would look like °/|\°  (sort of) which would use 3 stitches but create 3 stitches to keep it flat, but make a decorative feature.

Two- you can do all of that in 1 stitch, like a cluster, and uses 1 stitch and creates 1 stitch-top.  Either of those 2 would 'work off' 3 stitches together, but have a different result.

Sometimes looking at the pattern photo helps, can you see that spot in the photo where you are, and if it looks like it spans 3 stitches, or is a cluster in 1 stitch?  

 

[Marian Amos]

Thank you SO much for your quick response!  I have attached the pattern so that you can see my problem.  I don’t think it’s referring to a decrease.  The entire garment is just crocheted in 2 rectangles.  I don’t have any closeup picture, but since you are more experienced, maybe you can tell what is going on.

Marian

[Granny Square]

Ha!  It starts with 'cast on', which of course is a knitting term to put the initial row of stitches on your knitting needle.

The row the stitch pattern you questioned appears is in row 3, so my "guess one" for 'flat fabric' is correct, including my guess that there are probably chains on either side.  

The stitch diagram shows you in the legend what each stitch looks like, a dot is a chain, a DC is a vertical line with 1 slash, a TR is a vertical line with 2 crossed lines (the the crossed lines represent the # of yarnovers you make at the beginning - diagrammed patterns are great for something like this, it is easier to 'get your bearings' as you can actually see what the lace pattern is supposed to look like, and the relationship of the stitch you are making to that which came before, rather than try to visualize the result of a written-out pattern.

The motions performed in the stitch group diagrammed above are similar to a decrease because you are joining 3 stitches together into 1, but it is different because the sts worked into are not adjacent sts; it's not a cluster (3 stitches into 1),  it's a decorative stitch that brings 3 non-adjacent stitches together into 1, but keeps the stitch count the same by adding chains.  Let's call it a 'wide cluster' (if there is a correct name for this, it escapes me).

So the portion of row 3 that graphed above, written out, reading the stitch symbols right to left, would be:

chain 5, (counts as turning chain 3 + 2 chains across), make an incomplete TR in the second DC (of row 2), an incomplete DC in the 4th DC, an incomplete tr in the 6th DC - yo and join these 3 stitches together into 1.  Chain 5.       ....then do the same thing except over stitches 8, 10, and 12 of the row below, and so on.

 

Edited September 7, 2021 by Granny Square
fix redundant wording

[Marian Amos]

Thanks so much for all your help!  The project is going well now.

Marian

[Granny Square]

 h