The Butterfly Stitch

      Considered one of the easiest boondoggle stitches you can do, Butterfly is nothing more than placing one loop inside of another loop of boondoggle, similar to the way you do it when crocheting. Created using either one color of boondoggle folded in half, or by using two different colors of boondoggle, as shown here. Measurements are not that hard, as your strands should be ABOUT twice as long as the finished length you're looking for, so if you want a six-inch Butterfly, you'd start with strands a bit longer than one foot in length. If using only one color, remember that you need to DOUBLE this measurement, as you'll need to FOLD the strand in half before starting.

	For this Butterfly, I'm going to use Neon Yellow and Black, so it will be easy to tell the two strands apart. I'm actually going to make a ring out of this butterfly, so I'm going to start with strands that are about 6-8 inches in length (to account for varied widths of fingers).
	Start by tieing the two strands together using a half-granny knot. We've done this before, while making the Cobra, Spiral Braid, and Diamond Braid. Leave about 3-4 inches above the knot, as we'll be using these strands again later.
	Alright, now hold the project with the knot at the top and note the lay of your strands. For me, I note that my Black strand is UNDER my Neon Yellow strand, so I'll be starting with the Black strand.
	Starting with the lower strand, Black in my case, create a loop UNDER the other strand. This is backwards of the way I taught you to start the Chinese Staircase, remember?
	Now bend the upper strand (Neon Yellow) under the Black strand to form a second loop that will come up through the first loop we made with the Black strand.
	After pulling the Black Strand tight around the Neon Yellow strand, take the Black strand and come up through the Neon Yellow loop to form another Black loop, like this...
	Continue this process of making a loop of one color and putting it into the loop of the second color, and then pulling tight, and then repeating the process with the opposite color. After creating 5-6 stitches, we can begin to see how it looks. This shot was taken directly after pulling the Black strand tight around the Neon Yellow strand.
	Let's do another. Take the Black strand, bend it down and through the Neon Yellow loop to form another loop, but this time out of Black...
	Now pull the Neon Yellow strand tight around the Black strand. Don't worry about the looseness of the Black strand, as that will be taken care of shortly.
	Done with the Black strand, so it's back to Neon Yellow. Bend it backwards and through the previous Black loop...
	...and then pull the Black strand tight, which corrects the looseness we saw earlier!
	After numerous additional stitches, I'm ready to end the Butterfly stitch, so I tighten up this last loop, but this time, instead of making a loop to stick through this last loop, I want to stick the loose strand through the loop instead...
	...like this.
	After pulling it taught, I'm ready to grab the Black end again...
	...and after pulling the Black end taught, it's all but finished...
	...just have to pull the Yellow strand one more time!
	Remember, earlier, I stated I was making a RING out of this butterfly? To do this, I need to flip back to the end I started with, untie the half-granny knot I started the project with, then slowly start UNDOING stitches, until I get my strands situated properly, then I finish off this end the same way I did in the step above.
	This looks good. My objective is to take the two strand ends at this end and COMBINE them with the two strand ends at the other end of the work and create some CIRCLE stitch. I needed to compare how the strands lined up with each other to determine how many of my initial stitches I was going to have to UNDO, but now I'm ready.
	After combining the two ends into a Circle stitch, I do one more Circle stitch, then twist the ring inside out, so as to put the nice, smooth side inside, before finishing it off with 7-8 additional Circle stitches.
A Butterfly Stitch Project, properly completed! The Butterfly Ring, with jewel made of Circle!