Crochet Diary: Peacock Feather Patchwork Afghan

For my sister's upcoming graduation I decided to make her an afghan as a present, since I made one for my brother's birthday last year. Her colors tend toward purples and blues, peacock colors; that theme was confirmed by some trolling on her Pinterest wedding board. So when I found Banana Moon Studio's "Peacock Feather Square" it was too good to be true.

I made a test square and it came out pretty small, about 4 in. by 4 in., and after I checked out some of the finished projects on Ravelry, I didn't like the look of an entire blanket of just those squares; they were way too busy. As I like the look of patchwork afghans, I decided to mix the "Peacock Feather Square" with a few different squares including "Double Crochet Granny Square" from Robyn Chachula's Crochet Stitches Visual Encyclopedia, Chris Simon's "Pavo Square" (I didn't notice for awhile, but apparently the square is named after a southern constellation called the Peacock), and "Openwork Square" and "Lacy Cross" from Jan Eaton's 200 Crochet Blocks.

Here is the pattern as originally planned, but I think I'm rotating the "Peacock" and "Double Crochet" squares so that the solid purple is parallel to the other solid colored squares.

If you can't read my writing, the bottom bit of the pattern lists 7 "Pavo" in green, 7 "Openwork" in blue, 7 "Cross" in gray, 42 "Double Crochet" in purple, and 42 "Peacock." I wanted a mix of open/lacy squares with more solid ones. The larger squares are about 8 in. by 8 in., to match the 4 in. by 4 in. of the "Peacock" and "Double Crochet" squares.

For the yarn, I went with Red Heart Super Saver, my go-to because it's easy to care for, has many shades, and is inexpensive. The green is Tea Leaf, the blue is Blue, the purple is Medium Purple, and the white is Soft White. The gray is Caron One Pound's Soft Grey Mix, because I couldn't find a Red Heart gray in stock that I liked.

As of today's date, I have all of the squares made and am about to start the seemingly, unending process of sewing them together with an invisible stitch.

Crochet Diary: 8-Bit Pokeball Afghan

After seeing the wedding present I made for some friends, my brother made the observation that I could make any 8-bit image out of granny squares, not that he knows what a granny square is called. So I took the idea and ran with it to create this:

It was pretty simple. I searched "8 bit pokeball grid" and came up with some images to base the pattern on.

It ended up being huge, but since the little brother is 6 ft. 4 in., it fit him well. The granny pattern is Kristie-Beth's "Simple Solid Granny Square," the same one I used for the Tetris blanket.

Crochet Diary Entry 5: PND Sampler Part 3

With all the changes I made to the interior squares of this pattern, I thought that the border would take some serious working and reworking to make it look right. However, I was pleasantly surprised that beyond some extra stitches and a little fudging in the # row, it was really simple.

Round 1: 3 sc in each corner, 143 sc across top and bottom, 183 sc across left and right sides.

Round 2: No real change, just more rep.

Round 3: No change.

Round 4: Depending on where you joined on the last Round, you may have to sl st. into two sc to get to the corner instead of one.

Also, with the added length and width, the skip 4 sc between the shells and the sc does not work out right. I skipped only 3 sc, which worked except for a little fudging when I skipped 4 sc two times (on either side of a shell towards the middle of the side).

Round 5: No change.

Round 6: No change.