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I have been burning the midnight oil to ready my shop for the holidays, finally tackling some craft “to-do’s” by adding new crochet designs and owl soap scents. I crocheted some ribbon candy a year or so ago, but wasn’t happy with the finished look. Ever since I started working on the crochet cheese commission, I have begun to pay more attention to yarn texture, instead of just trying to perfect the design by tweaking the actual pattern and playing around with stitches. So, with a mottled cheese, I chose mottled or fuzzy yarn; for waxy-covered cheeses, I chose shiny yarn, and so on. It isn’t just about getting the color and shape right, especially when it comes to recreating food products. So, what I discovered about the ribbon candy design is that I was using plain-old acrylic yarn, which makes for chunky, not-shiny ribbon candy. Ribbon candy is, of course, smooth, shiny, almost elegant.

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Anyway, I stocked up on Caron Simply Soft yarns, which are shiny and thinner than most acrylic worsted weight yarns. With little white ribbons (!), these make pretty sweet (!) holiday ornaments. Free crochet pattern is after the jump.

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There are three different patterns for the three ribbon candies seen here to get the different color schemes.

Supplies

Caron yarn in pink, red and white
F hook
White 1/4 inch ribbon

Pink and white ribbon candy:

With pink yarn, ch 74 and sc for five rows, always making a ch 1 turn at the beginning of each row. Leaving a long tail, snip pink and join white. With white, sl into each stitch across. Finish off. With white yarn again, join at the beginning of the pink free loops on the other side. Sl across and finish off. (Skip ahead to Assembling).

Red and white ribbon candy:

With red yarn, ch 74 and sc for 1 row. Leave red yarn and join white. Sc across with white for one row and snip. Pick up red on the other side and sc for 3 more rows. Finish off, leaving a long tail. Join white and sl into each stitch across. With white yarn again, join at the beginning of the red free loops on the other side. Sl across and finish off. (Skip ahead to Assembling).

Pink, red and white ribbon candy:

With white yarn, ch 74 and sc for 1 row. Leave white yarn and join red. Sc across with red for one row and snip. Pick up white on the other side and sc for 3 more rows. Finish off, leaving a long tail. Join pink and sl into each stitch across.

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Assembling

Cut a 9-inch piece of white ribbon. Laying the long crocheted rectangle flat, sl stitched edges facing down, tie ribbon around a center stitch, being careful not to let it show through to the right side. Then insert the loop made through the crocheted rectangle so that it pops over to the right side. Begin folding into 1 1/4 inch pieces, so that you make about five folds and ribbon candy is about 2 inches long. Hold in place and with long yarn tail, sew through folds a couple of times until it stays in place on its own. Knot yarn on inside of a fold and tuck away.

Date: Dec 7th, 2009 · Comments RSS · Tags: Artsy/Crafty