Crochet!

This post was originally published on 5 September 2012

Here's a project I've been working on, on and off, for about a year now:

Lots of circles!

A saw a picture of one of these lovely 'circle in a square' afghans on Pinterest, and then I found this pattern, which is what I've been using.

The wool that I'm mostly using is Paton's Bluebell, which is 100% wool 5 ply crepe.  It's beautiful wool to use and I know it lasts well (I have an orange cardigan my Mum made from it sometime in the 70s - can you spot the left over wool I'm using in the afghan?).  It's kind of a silly project for me to be doing, since it would be good for using up little scraps of wool but I haven't really built up much of a wool collection so I've had to buy a lot of it. There's some odds and ends I got from my mother and grandmother, but since it's an unusual weight they didn't have that much.  At least I got the cream wool cheap! It's also 100% wool 5 ply crepe but it's not Paton's so it was much cheaper ($2/ball?)

When I get enthused I can get quite a lot done pretty quickly but I keep getting distracted and putting it away for months at a time.  Getting tendinitis didn't help either.  At the moment I have 90 circles, so I'm somewhere between a half and two thirds done, depending on how giant I make it. I'm a bit worried I won't have enough cream wool to make it enormous though.

Oh, and when I started I was putting the cream borders around until I realised that it would be easier to link them up if I do all the cream at once.  Then I did a few more cream bits to make sure I would be able to put them together, but I can and I think it'll look nice! My grandmother was very impressed that I won't have to sew lots and lots of squares together.

And then I was on Pinterest again and got distracted...

BUT LOOK CROCHETED OWLS

They are so cute and I couldn't resist them. I won't do a whole afghan of them, and I don't want to mix them in with my dignified, classy looking one, so I think I'll just do a cushion cover. And I in fact have three owls now, so it shouldn't take long, except that I was thinking of doing the back in cream, so I really need to wait and see if I actually have some left over from the afghan... Or buy more, if I can.

Oh, the colours I'm using for these ones are mostly a selection taken from the afghan ones (the pink and green are new so I haven't made any circles from them yet, but they'll be in there) except for the bright, shiny, acrylic blue. I kind of have in mind a cute fabric range that I'd like to make cushion from which has similar colours.