Runaway October

So, is a crochet-a-long really a crochet-a-long (CAL) if no one else is cro­chet­ing with you?

When I saw news of the Lion Brand CAL pop up in the blog-o-sphere I knew I wanted to par­tic­i­pate, espe­cially since most “A-Longs” are for knit­ters. The pat­tern selected was for a sam­pler afghan, which is cool because it might have kept my atten­tion. Of course I don’t have much of a yarn stash so I had to wait to get yarn until the spouse was in an agree­able mood. I decided on using a Bernat Berella “4” in a nice heathered gray. Typ­i­cally I steer very clear of acrylic yarns, but it was on clear­ance. By the time I had every­thing together I real­ized that I was already weeks behind on the CAL. 

The orig­i­nal pat­tern turned out to be 10 blocks each of three dif­fer­ent pat­terns. Meh. I decided to ven­ture on my own, so I picked up Basic Cro­chet Stitches — 250 Stitches to Cro­chet by Erica Knight.

The book is well writ­ten and dis­played. It gives a brief intro­duc­tion to sev­eral basic stitches and how to read cro­chet­ing dia­grams. It doesn’t cover every stitch used in the book, so I have had to go look­ing for some of the more obscure ones. But so far so good. As I near the end of a cur­rent square, I become anx­ious to start and learn a new one. With 30+ squares in this afghan it’s essen­tial that I keep interested.

This color is more true to the actual color.

I def­i­nitely want to get my hands on more of the Har­mony Guides, such as The Har­mony Guides: Edg­ings and Fin­ish­ing Stitches: 250 to Cro­chet,

and The Har­mony Guides: 101 Stitches to Crochet.

They even have some inter­est­ing look­ing knit­ting books — The Har­mony Guides: Cable & Aran Stitches: 250 Stitches to Knit. I do love a nice cable.

I fig­ure that if it comes out nicely I can give it away as a Christ­mas present, and if it doesn’t… well, the boys wont mind a few wonky squares as long as it’s warm and snuggly.

Oh! And what post is com­plete with­out pic­tures of my helper?

Thanks for read­ing.

What projects are you cur­rently work­ing on?