A Fourple

So, I'm crocheting from this pattern, and it tells me to do this stitch that I haven't done before. It's called a double treble crochet stitch. It sounds very complicated, doesn't it? Well, once I read how to do it, and actually tried it, I was rather unimpressed!

If you don't crochet, let me explain it this way: There's these basic stitches that are different sizes and they are the single crochet, double crochet and treble crochet. 1,2, 3. Simple? (Oh, and there's a half double crochet that's in between a single and a double. So it should really be called a one-and-a-half crochet stitch. You start to see the problem...) Makes sense, right? So then here comes some mysterious monster called the double treble. What? Well, I did it, and it turns out it's really a quadruple crochet stitch. Or, as I would like to call it, a fourple crochet stitch.

My point is, who was on drugs when they came up with this system of naming crochet stitches?! I mean, I'm not an expert crocheter, I only started a few months ago, but I can count. A double treble is not two trebles, as I first suspected. And it's not six units long, it's not a sixple (2 x 3). No, it's four. When does six equal four? Only in America, evidently.

See, I heard from my crochet teacher that the British have a much more logical system of naming crochet stitches. But we Americans couldn't be satisfied with the Brit system. Oh, no. As if King George was keeping the colonists under his thumb by forcing them to use British crochet. Maybe there was even some special protest, like the stupid Boston Tea Party. Maybe a bunch of crocheters threw their crochet hooks and yarn into a lake. Only things went horribly awry. Frogs and ducks hobbling around, tangled up in yarn; fish horking up crochet hooks. What a disaster! It was embarrassing. And when the local beat reporter went out to write a story, lifelong crocheters claimed they were ironsmiths and barkeeps. They refused to be interviewed. So the story went unreported. And was lost to time.

Am I obsessing about this? Probably. But I like things to be logical. I'm a logical person, and I love math. And this is just wrong. It should not be! Well, I'm pushing back. All my double trebles shall henceforth be known as fourples. And if I ever get good enough to write a pattern...fourples.