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I've been playing around with that staple of crochet blankets the ripple. By adding a tiny tweak you get a fabulous new texture. But before we progress to the tweaks lets cover the basics of creating a ripple in crochet.
How is the Ripple Made?
The most important part of the ripple is reducing the stitch count to create a valley and increasing the stitch count to create a hill. Theses decreases and increases should match evenly on both sides of the hills and valleys.
They can be gentle by decreasing a single stitch at a time over two stitches, or a harder 'climb' by decreasing twice in the same stitch. It's a subtle change to the angle of the ripple slopes but a fun one to play around with, if you are an experimenter.
Usually a ripple blanket will be worked with a treble crochet (in UK terms) or a double crochet (in US terms). They are the same stitch although have slightly different names, I will use UK terms for the remainder of this tutorial, although the actual techniques are identical.
Tr2tog Treble 2 stitches together (will need to be worked twice)
Tr3tog Treble 3 stitches together (only worked once)
Inc2 Work 2 tr stitches in a single stitch (will need to be worked twice)
Inc3 Work 3 tr stitches in a single stitch (only worked once)
How to Decrease?
Rather handily for us a treble (or US double) crochet is created in two steps, when decreasing we make use of this fact and only work the first step for each stitch to be included in the decrease. Finishing through all the stitches with a single step 2. You can actually decrease a large number of stitches this way for a very interesting effect (if you wanted to experiment further).
Step 1: Yarn over, place your hook through the next stitch from the row below, yarn over and pull through the first two loops.
Step 2: Yarn over, pull through final two loops on the hook.
How to Tr2tog?
We take the steps outlined above and apply them to the next two stitches in three simple steps.
Step 1 - Yarn over, hook through next st, yarn over hook and pull through two loops.
Step 2 - Yarn over, hook through next st, yarn over hook and pull through two loops.
You now have three loops on your hook
Step 3 - Yarn over and pull through 3 loops.
Two stitches have now become one, in the words of the SpiceGirls.
How to Tr3tog?
Now you've got 2 into 1 nailed then three is just one extra step.
Step 1 - Yarn over, hook through next st, yarn over hook and pull through two loops.
Step 2 - Yarn over, hook through next st, yarn over hook and pull through two loops.
Step 3 - Yarn over, hook through next st, yarn over hook and pull through two loops.
By now you have 4 loops on your hook.
Step 4 - Yarn over and pull through all 4 loops to finish.
Three have become once.
How to Increase?
This is super easy!
You simply crochet more than one stitch in a single space. Rather than working 1 tr (or US double) in each stitch from the row below you pause and work either two sts for the gentle slope or three sts for the steeper climb.
For those who learn by watching I have a quick video for you to demonstrate these techniques.