December finishes I - Mandalas

So far this month I've finished a lot of projects that I started.

This thread mandala was almost finished in September, but the last round where it attaches to the steel ring was very hard. So at some point I decided to finish one point a day. About three weeks later, it was done.

I wish I could figure out how to arrange these in a square. Anyway, above is an experiment in asymmetry. The idea was to use up small amounts of yarn. My oldest kid really likes it, so it's for them. I love the colors, but I don't like the asymmetry.

Here, I started by using up small amounts of yarn, but I made sure the result was symmetric.

Forget using up small amounts of yarn. Above is planned from the beginning. It's good for Christmas.

Now this one is great. I planned it very well. It's on its way to El Paso as a gift for my little sister. I don't think she reads my blog, but she does look at my Instagram feed, and it's on there. But she doesn't know it's hers. I believe she likes these colors.

Circle of Friends Squares, Part V

I have many irons in the fire right now, but I have finished the Circle of Friends Squares this week, and they're even blocked. But I am going to wait to join them until after I've finished making presents for my family.

I took a few pictures to record their origin and otherwise keep track, though when I arrange them into a blanket, I don't plan on preserving the order in which I made them.

Here are squares 46 to 54. Top left is from a skirt I saw on a silly YouTube video. Next is my kid's teal leopard pajama pants with a blue and purple tie-dyed top, and after that one from a fuse bead creation. Second row: Summer garden colors, grand canyon colors, and last summer's tie-dyed shirt colors. The last row is all from tie-dyed shirts.

At this point I was done with random ideas, so I took the next eight from my unfinished granny square quilt.

   

For the last square, I chose colors to represent the flowers that had been keeping me company all week.

Here are the last nine squares (55 to 63), being blocked on a tie-dyed towel.

Actually this is the original bouquet. The picture I showed next to square 63 is after I took out a few faded flowers.

Hook to Heal and the Rustic Lace Square

Kathryn Vercillo of crochetconcupiscence.com just published a book on personal creative growth, Hook to Heal. It consists of exercises and explanations for various categories of personal growth, such as mindfulness and letting go, along with recommendations about how to go about implementing a program of creative expansion.

The reason that I'm crocheting now is partly because Kathryn started a project to honor the memory of Wink, who died of depression, and to raise awareness about depression. While looking for flower patterns, I found her blog and a description of Wink and the Mandalas For Marinke project. My donations to the project are detailed in earlier blog posts. So I was predisposed to like this book, but I wanted to describe how it's working for me so that my praise won't be easily dismissed as flattery.

The first exercise in the "letting go" chapter is to make something with a wildly different hook and yarn size than the pattern requires, with the point being that the item is then, in a sense, useless. I want to make a v-stitch blanket, so I decided to apply the project to the v-stitch blanket and make one from cotton thread with a 1.5 mm steel hook. The start of the "blanket" is the colorful strip in the picture. Below the "blanket" is my rustic lace square project.

Above are my current thread projects. The rustic lace square motif is a popular design on Instagram, and I wanted to use my gray thread to make a small piece using the motif. The large incomplete panel in the center of the picture consists of six of the rustic lace squares joined together, and the centers of the other three are placed where they are supposed to end up, once they're finished. Unfortunately I didn't read the instructions correctly, and the wide quarter circles in the corners of the motif didn't meet properly. I decided that to redo the outer round of six little squares was not a big deal. So I frogged the outside rounds, which separated them at the same time, because I'm joining as I crochet the outer round.

Here are my squares, partially frogged. These squares have other problems that I didn't fix. I have two different sized hooks that both say 1.5 mm. One or two of these squares have centers that were made with the smaller hook, so they are slightly smaller overall. When I found out there were two different hooks, I put away the smaller one and reworked what I could, but I didn't rework the differently colored inside, and it made a difference.

However here are the final nine squares, joined and pinned to a pillow. I blocked them by spraying them with water and ironing them, and then letting them dry like this. Much of the unevenness disappeared. What remains is to add a border. This is where the creativity exercise and other things I read in the book really helped.

I had no instructions for making a border. I've been making my own borders for the granny square flowers, but this was more difficult. I had a picture of another rustic lace square project similar to mine that had a nice border, but it didn't make sense to me to imitate it, because it would have pulled the corner quarter-circles along the sides to the edge, and I wanted them to "float" the way they do on the inside.

So I used the strip of my v-stitch "blanket" as a kind of ruler to figure out how many stitches to put in the border. Being able to think of myself as creative was incredibly helpful here. I realize I don't call myself an artist. In my Instagram profile I say I am an art student and a "polycrafter." I often say, I'm not creative, I'm just good at following directions. One of the things Kathryn says early on in her book is that we must claim the title of artist. I have been turning this idea over in my mind for a few days, and it gave me the confidence I needed to design a border for this lovely set of rustic lace squares.

The picture above shows the first round of the border. In the lacy part of the border, I put two sc stitches in each loop and one in between loops and at the ends. I put one sc in each point where two corner points come together. I put a sc, ch 2, sc in the corner points at the outside corners. Between the lacy sections and the points, I made 12 chain stitches. I wasn't sure whether 12 was the right number, but the first round looked OK, and after I added the second round, I wasn't about to start over to make additional adjustments. I will be blocking the piece again and possibly starching it, so it doesn't matter that much if there is some give here and there.

In this picture I've added two more rounds of sc in two different grays, and I'm making a v-stitch round in the silvery gray of the central flower motif of the rustic lace square. I would not have thought to do this, and I would not have been able to design the border at all, had I not started the v-stitch "blanket" exercise.

Finally, here's a picture of how I plan to finish the border. After I make the v-stitch round I will add three more rounds of sc in the reverse order of colors as the first three rounds. I thought at first that the border was a little overpowering, but I think that's only because I've been staring at the rustic lace squares for so long that they're not interesting anymore. That's not the case. It's a beautiful and complex pattern, and the border will do it justice. It's a bit time-consuming but if I work at it I can probably finish by the end of the week while still making time to move some other projects forward. (I've edited this post to show the finished piece at the beginning. The border turned out slightly wavy in spite of blocking, so if I ever make another one of these again, 12 chain stitches is a bit too much to connect the parts of the squares that are at the edge.)

Circle of Friends Square, Part IV

I've made nine more of the Circle of Friends Squares. They were all inspired by blocks from my unfinished "granny squares" quilt. Here they are, next to the corresponding quilt blocks. The photo is a composite from the Layout app for Instagram.

Here's the ninth square, without its quilt block. I've already started working on the next series of nine squares, which will be based on an assortment of images and ideas.

Works in Progress

These are otherwise known as WIPs. I have a few besides the Circle of Friends squares.

The last round of this thread mandala is very difficult. I have to wrap most of the stitches around a steel ring. I've started doing one point per day, which will guarantee that the thing is done in a few more weeks.

Here's another thread project - I have just recently managed to advance the three remaining squares to the second round. The finished piece will be 3 x 3 of the squares, which are called "Rustic Lace Square." Then I'll put a border of some kind.

I've decided to make ornaments. This one is finished.

These aren't finished - they need the top part and a hanging loop.

Finally here is the big WIP - another Granny Square Flower afghan for my mom. I have been making one square a day for 25 days (when this picture was taken - there's another one now). 11 more days to go, and then a border.

Last time I made this, I didn't make the poinsettia block (pictured) the way it said in the book. I put a squash blossom in the middle and made the leaves and petals be yellow squash and zucchini.

Finally, this isn't a WIP (it's finished), but it is part of the reason I have so many WIPs. I wanted to make a mandala and a bulb that changed color, and I did.

Circle of Friends Square Part III

Today I finished square number 36, so I thought I would take some group photos and also say something about the inspiration for the squares, in case I forget.

In the picture above, they all are together. Half of them have the black border that they'll need for the continuous join. I've actually done a trial run of the continuous join, and it will work. I'm still going for a 7 x 9 square blanket. I'm thinking of adding a colorful border based on the "winners" of color use in all the squares. My spreadsheet counts how many times a color appears in the squares. So far the winners are mustard (golden yellow), white, "bluebell" (light blue), and kelly green.

Squares 1 to 9. Top to bottom, left to right we have colors of the fall garden (white dots are the daisies), favorite colors, what I got by starting with brown (was going to be candy colors but morphed along the way), starting with magenta and using gray (because the gray in #3 was so cool), another one with gray and some of my new colors, bright fall colors inspired by the trees in Wellesley, not sure (probably trying to capture the elusive cheerful primary color scheme), new yarn (red, taupe, black and white), and a not-so-beautiful attempt to make a fruit salad (kiwi, strawberry, pineapple, blueberry, honeydew, raspberry and a pastry color on the outside).

Squares 10 to 18. Top was another try for candy colors, vegetable colors (carrots, beets, peas), yarns from my yellow and neutral box (plus lavender), inspired by a corduroy skirt on Instagram, not sure about this one but it's awesome (maybe just trying to use that peach in the middle), not sure about this one either (maybe something christmas colored), republic day in Turkey, Orla Kiely colors from my origami box, more fall garden colors.

Squares 19 to 27. An attempt at Christmas colors, the other origami box (from the pastel colored cups I saw at the Louisiana museum), probably one that I started with taupe and then just whatever came to mind. The next five are based on quilt blocks from my granny square quilt, and finally another fall color inspired square (from the morning walk down the driveway).

Squares 28 to 36. Fall colors (from early morning waiting for the bus), bright rainbow, pastel rainbow, washed-out rainbow, dark rainbow, dawn colors, christmas colors again, fall colors from the living room window (birch, pine and oak), and finally another square from my quilt.

Circle of Friends Squares Part II

Last week I posted about five Circle of Friends Squares I made. This week I have 25. That means I've made 20 this week. I want them to all be different, but it's getting hard to determine which colors I've already used when I've made so many. I want to make a blanket with 7 x 9 squares, so I need a bit less than twice as many more. I decided to make a spreadsheet to keep track.

Here's a screen shot of the spreadsheet. Each row is a color of yarn that I'm using for this project. Since I'm using mostly Vanna's Choice yarn by Lion Brand, I copied the color swatches they have on their web site to place in the first cell of the row. This was a chore, but it is doable. "Format Picture" in Excel has an option to resize the picture in a cell every time the cell is moved or resized. It was very hard to get this to work at first. The instructions I found on the internet said to select the cell, add the desired picture, resize the picture to be the same size as the cell, and then choose the option "Format->Picture->Properties->Move and size with cells" (I have Excel 2010 on a Mac). This didn't work every time. Eventually I figured out that the size had to be exact. So I formatted the cells to be .25 x 1 inch, and I resized the picture to be exactly this size using "Format->Picture->Size." I had to unlock the aspect ratio first. The picture functionality is still a bit flaky, but with some care I was able to make it work.

Each column represents one square. Round 1 is the center round and round 7 is the outer round. I put the round number in the row of the color that I used for that round. So each column should have the numbers 1-7 in 7 of the cells. Finally I used the "countif" function in Excel to count the number of times a color appeared in each round, and added a total of these for the number of squares on the right-hand side of the row. I can add columns as needed. For two of the squares, I had repeated a color. So I only put the first occurrence of that color in the square's column, and I added one to the appropriate "countif" cell on the right for the second occurence.

Right now I'm using this quilt top for inspiration, though I haven't exhausted all the other ideas I have for my squares. The pattern is the quilt version of "granny squares." Each square gives me a suggested combination of colors, and I'll go through the process here to illustrate how this works.

This block has a mustard colored center with pale yellow and beige on the outer squares. The four middle squares are a light brown batik with some additional colors in the dots. At first this doesn't look promising. How interesting could a brown and yellow square be? So I decided to give the dot colors a prominent role.

Here are the colors I've chosen. The yellow and cream will be rounds 1 and 7. The bobbles will be radiant lime green and bright aqua, and the hint of dark in the batik fabric will be represented by eggplant. The gold and brown colors will be the flat rounds 3 and 5. In this picture, the yarn for rounds 1 to 7 are from right to left, with round 1 being the yellow on the right.

According to the spreadsheet, these colors appear in the rounds I've chosen for them 1, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0 and 0 times in rounds 1 to 7. So if I stick with this arrangement I will have three squares with gold in round 3. I prefer this to the alternative with yellow in round 3 and gold in round 1, even though I've never used the gold yarn in round 1. So I'll stay with the arrangement I chose.

Here's the finished square. In the final version, I switched the aqua and eggplant bobbles.