Sew I See!

It's another FO reveal post (as promised)! This time, the finished object is my Stardust Melodies Texture'ghan, which was a MCAL I participated in last summer. The designer is Polly Plum, one of my favorite afghan block designers.  However, while Polly Plum is generally known for her interestingly textured blocks that offer wonderful opportunities for interesting color-play, these blocks are designed to be worked in solid colors.  They're so highly textured, there's still plenty to hold your attention. I made two of each of the 24 block patterns, so I ended up with a total of 48 blocks.  Here's my project page , if you want to know more about the block patterns and yarns used. Ah, another finished project finally photographed! These blocks were fun to make-- highly recommended if you're a fan of strongly textured crochet.

Here it is, a long overdue afghan "reveal" post!  I'm not even going to embarrass myself by looking up when I started it/finished it/whatever.  I will simply acknowledge that it's been a long time coming and just share some photos of the finished afghan.   This started out as a CAL, but I ended up just going my own way and choosing my own blocks.  At some point, I decided to call this the Whispers of Spring Afghan.  It's a sampler made up of 24 different blocks from a variety of designers (though there's an emphasis on Polly Plum's patterns, because I love her designs).   Information about the exact block patterns, yarns, hook size, and border pattern used is available on the Ravelry project page . Without further ado, here are a bunch of photos! Looking at this one for the first time a long while, I was reminded of how lovely some of those block patterns are.  There are some really go

(How's that for a weird, random post title?) First up, Orion! After setting it aside for a while, I'm back to crocheting "Orion" , a doily pattern from Grace Fearon. There are tons of popcorn stitches in this one; fortunately, I like crocheting popcorn! There's also something the designer calls a "special small bullion" stitch.  It sounds kind of scary (to me, at least), but don't let it intimidate you.  They're actually pretty fun little stitches to make, I think.  I like them and hope they'll make an appearance in some of the designer's future doily patterns.  (What I did  have some frustration over was the dtr6tog, but they didn't turn out too bad.) Here's a photo of my progress from a few days back: Second topic: crazy crumbs. This project has been evolving for a long while.  It started out with using up crumbs left over from my first string quilt.  Those first crumb blocks were fairly small-- something like 5

Where did February go?!  First, there's a bit of "old business".  I decided to drop the 365 Crochet Flowers project.  The flowers are fun to make, but I just couldn't think of anything I really wanted to make from so many irregularly shaped/sized worsted-weight acrylic flowers.  Crochet thread would've yielded more useful flowers, but those would've been less enjoyable to make (for me).  Some lightweight (but not thread-weight!) mercerized cotton would've been better, but I still didn't have any specific, motivating project in mind for them.  Also, there's the fact that even one little flower a day takes time to make, and it adds up.  It would be worth it if I knew what I wanted to do with them, but without a sense of purpose...?  No, not really worth it (again, for me). In the end, I decided that I'll eventually make something from the flowers I'd already crocheted, but for the time being, I'm not making any more of them.  I