Part 3: Crochet Construction
Alright, time to actually start making one of these things!
Overview
I’ll be using an example of a dodecahedron here to explain and walk through the process. You can follow along with this example to learn the process and then apply it to other shapes!
Below I’ve listed out the most important attributes of this example with terms I’ll reference as we go through the process. Some of these might not have been explained yet, but I wanted to put them near the top of the page so you get familiar with them and so referencing them is easy.
Polyhedron: Dodecahedron
Face shape: Pentagon (5 sides)
Side length: 3 stitches. Also the number of stitches used to connect spikes to each other.
Perimeter: 15 stitches
Spike instructions: 15, 15, 15, 10 (decrease round), 10, 10
Base: The first round of each spike- the ring of fsc’s
I also do tend to use the terms spike and face somewhat interchangeably here. The spikes are worked off of each face, so they’re pretty interchangeable in my mind, but I try to reserve face for when I’m talking about the underlying polyhedron, and spike for when I’m talking about the crochet project.
Step 0: Shape and side length
This step goes back to the math we talked about before. Choose a side length for the faces on the polyhedron you’ve selected and calculate the perimeter of that face.
For my example, I’ve selected a dodecahedron and a side length of 3. Since the faces of a dodecahedron are pentagons, my perimeter for every spike is 3 x 5 = 15 stitches total.
If you’re using a polyhedron that has faces of multiple different shapes, your perimeter will differ per face.
Step 1: Plan your rounds
It can help to plan out the rounds for your spikes before you start crocheting them. The fortunate thing is crochet is really forgiving, so if you end up not liking how your spikes look it’s easy to frog and modify them!
There are two main things we’re concerned with here: how many stitches we decrease during our decrease rounds, and our stitch count for each round of our spike.
Decrease rounds
In your decrease rounds, I’d suggest decreasing the same number of times as the number of sides on the face you’re working. What that means is if you’re on a decrease round for a face with 5 sides, decrease 5 times. If you’re decreasing for a face with 4 sides, decrease 4 times. This is more important when working on a polyhedron with different face shapes, but is still a good rule of thumb regardless.
You should also try to keep your decreases equidistant from each other. This keeps your spike from leaning.
Stitch count
I’d also recommend that your rounds don’t get any smaller than twice the number of sides of the face you’re working. What that means is if you’re working on a face with 5 sides, don’t make your rounds less than 10 stitches around. I find that working rounds where the number of stitches equals the number of sides makes too pointy of a spike, and working multiple of these rounds gives a weird cylindrical look at the top of the spike.
Spike planning
Now we can start planning out the rounds that make up our spike. Your first round will have the same stitch count as your perimeter. I like to have a couple rounds between my decrease rounds, so for this example my stitch count per round looks like this:
Round 1: 15
Round 2: 15
Round 3: 15
Round 4: 10 (This is the decrease round! The instructions for this round would be [sc, invdec] x 5 to get to 10 stitches.)
Round 5: 10
Round 6: 10
This is what I call my “spike instructions” because they’re the (admittedly very rough) instructions I follow to make my spikes.
When I’m working with a polyhedron with different face shapes, I keep the total number of rounds the same, and the decrease rounds the same. For example, if my shape also had square faces, the square faces would follow very similar instructions to the pentagon ones, with round 4 being a decrease round from 12 stitches to 8.
Step 2: Make the first spike
For the first spike, we’ll start by making a foundation row that’s the same stitch count as our perimeter. For this example, I’ll fsc 15.
Now, we close the row of fsc’s into a ring. Make sure your ring isn’t twisted when you start this round! All we’re going to do is follow the instructions for round 2 of our spike, starting in the first stitch of our fsc row. This closes our ring and sets us up for continuous rounds.
Now, just follow the rounds you planned in the previous step to create your spike. If it ends up too blunt or too spiky for your liking, you can always frog and modify your rounds- just make sure you have the new version written down for reference!
When you complete this spike, cut and finish off your work. We’ll finish this the same way we would for amigurumi, by going through each of the front loops and cinching the top shut.
Step 3: Working the second spike
We want to connect each of these spikes to each other, and we’ll do that by crocheting directly into the base of the first spike.
The number of stitches we work into the base of this spike is the side length of our faces. In my example, I’ll be working 3 stitches total into the base of my first spike.
Attaching the yarn
Put a slip knot on your hook and work a single crochet into one of the bottom loops of the foundation single crochet ring from the first spike. This is known as a standing single crochet.
Crochet until you’ve worked approximately half the stitches for your side length. We’ll reconnect the ring to the base of our first spike using the remaining ones- this helps keep our spikes clean looking. In my case, I’ll sc 2 into the base of the first spike, leaving 1 sc to connect with. If my side length was 6, I’d sc 3, leaving 3 to connect with.
We do this rather than starting from a foundation row because if you start with a foundation row and then connect to the existing spike, those starting areas can start to get bumpy (which you can see in the example below). Doing the standing single crochet keeps everything clean.
Building out the ring
Now, we’ll use foundation single crochets to build out the rest of our ring. Remember to start your extending fsc into the same stitch as the last sc you worked.
Now, foundation single crochet the remaining stitches to reach your perimeter length. Note that some of your stitches will be worked directly into the first spike, so we need to remove those from our count here. Since I’m working 3 sc’s into the first spike, I need to fsc 15 – 3 = 12 to complete the perimeter. I’ll have 14 total stitches done at this point, since I need 1 more to connect to the base of the first spike.
Closing the loop
Now that I’ve done my fsc’s, I can crochet back into the base of the first spike to close the loop. When you work back into this spike, make sure your new ring isn’t twisted, and that you have room to work your remaining stitches.
In my example, I have 1 stitch remaining, so I’ll work into the stitch directly behind my first to connect the ring. If I had 2 stitches remaining, I’d start 2 stitches behind my first stitch, and so on.
Continuing the spike
Now, you’ll simply follow your spike instructions to build up the rest of this spike in the same way you did the first one!
A note on the base of the first spike
If you count out the loops you can work into on the base of your first spike, you’ll probably find that there’s one more loop than your perimeter length. I personally like to mitigate this by decreasing between the two loops at the start and end of the fsc loop to mitigate the jog in the first round. You don’t have to do this on your first spike, but I tend to just to get it out of the way.
Step 4: Working all subsequent spikes
Now is where it starts to get a bit more technically tricky.
All subsequent spikes will be worked by referencing your chosen polyhedron and connecting the new face to the existing ones in the same way as the chosen polyhedron. For example, if your polyhedron has 3 faces meeting at a vertex (as the dodecahedron does), you’re going to be working two sides of the new spike into existing spikes to connect 3 faces at a vertex. If your polyhedron has 4 faces meeting at a vertex, you’d work a spike adjacent to one of the existing ones, and then the 4th spike would connect two faces together.
When you’re working a spike that has two or more adjacent spikes already made, you’re going to be crocheting directly into the bases of those adjacent spikes. Since the dodecahedron has 3 adjacent faces, we’ll work our third spike into both of the existing ones.
I’d suggest starting in the right-most spike if you’re right handed, and left-most spike if you’re left handed. This lets us work most of our single crochets in the first pass and leave fewer of them at the end after our fsc’s.
Start in the first spike, and work about half the stitches needed to reach your side length. Again, my side length is 3, so I’m going to start 2 stitches from the point where the existing spikes meet, and sc 2.
Now we bridge the spikes. Crochet across the second spike, working the same number of single crochets as your side length. For my example, I’ll sc 3 in the second spike.
A quick note here: there tends to be some gapping when moving from one spike to the next, so I like to work my first stitch as a kind of decrease between the two spikes. You can see that in the image below.
If you have three or more adjacent spikes already made, do the same thing into the next adjacent spike and sc your side length into it (for me that’s sc 3).
Now we start our fsc’s. We now have two (or more) sides of the spike worked into existing spikes. We want this first ring to match our perimeter length, so we have to take those existing stitches into account. In this example, I have 2 sides of length 3 accounted for, so I need to fsc 15 – 6 = 9.
Another way to think about it is that I have 3 sides that are not yet adjacent to any face. This means I have to fsc 3 (side length) x 3 (number of sides) = 9.
Now, we connect this foundation row back to the spikes in the same way we did the first one- starting a number of stitches behind the first to complete our perimeter.
From there, you’re once again following the spike instructions!
A note on working the final spike
Your final spike will have no fsc’s in its base. All of the adjacent faces have been made, so all stitches for this spike will be worked directly into the bases of the adjacent spikes. I’d still suggest starting in the middle of one of the sides, though.
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