On the Move Again

I've moved my crocheting, blogging activities over to my new blog, Pink Mambo. I hope you like it!

Penelope Shawl pattern

I put this up as a free pattern on Ravelry a while back, but wanted to add it here to make sure you knew about it. Penelope is a great first shawl pattern as it is easily memorized so there's no need to keep looking at the pattern as you make the body of the shawl. It's a joy to make. It's shown here in Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable, but any yarn and hook size will work.

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/penelope-shawl

Border Rounds and Finished Circle Dance Afghan

Ta-daaa! My afghan is finally finished. I zoomed through crocheting all the blocks but sewing it together was the challenge I thought it would be. I hope yours is coming along swimmingly.

For the border rounds, I simply worked two rounds of dc in each st with (2 dc, ch 2, 2 dc) in each corner.

Then we gave it a nice steaming laid out on the bed, and the finished result is ready to go to its new home at my daughter's house.

Sewing Blocks Together

Now we’re about ready to sew some of the blocks together. On this design, not all the stitches along the outer rounds are not going to add up exactly, so we’ll have to get a little creative when sewing them together. I sewed my blocks together by whipstitching through both loops, but if you prefer, you can go through the back loop only. 

Stitch markers or safety pins are almost a must when sewing this afghan’s mishmash of blocks together, because you can use them to mark block beginnings and endings.

Because these blocks are 2”, 4”, 6”, 8”, 10” and 12”, everything is in 2” intervals as you sew them together. So if a block is offset to its neighbor, it will be by 2”, 4”, and so on. 

Say you need to sew the seam indicated in the photo below. The 4” block lines up with the top of the 6” block, so you’ll measure the 6” block and place a marker at 4”. Then line the 4” block up between the top of the 6” block and the marker, and whipstitch together, working in any extra stitches if one side has more stitches than the other. It works best if you fudge in the extra stitches in the middle of sewing blocks together, not at the corners.

All of this probably sounds more complicated than it really is. I’ve outlined exactly what to do to make the joinings as precise as possible, but all this really means is fudge a little to make each one fit, and sew them together. You might want to sew sections of squares together, then sew the sections together into larger sections. For the very best results, you can steam block your squares beforehand and block and steam as you sew, steaming little sections of squares sewn together as you get them done. This is not absolutely necessary, but it’s what I did with mine so they would look extra nice in the photos.

Circle Dance 2" and 6" Squares Added

How are you coming along on the Circle Dance Afghan? I'm enjoying seeing the photos on Ravelry and Facebook. If this is the first you've read about this fun Crochet Along project, go HERE to read all about it and see the posts from the last couple of weeks for all the details.

Some people are having a bit of trouble getting the correct size blocks. Tamara over on www.mooglyblog.com wrote a great article on this subject, and rather than repeat her words, I'll send you over there to get the scoop. Here's the article:

http://www.mooglyblog.com/make-work-getting-afghan-squares-size-need/

Basically, you can add a round of sc, hdc or dc to the block as needed, with (2 sts, ch 2, 2 sts) in corners to get the correct size.

I've posted the 2" and 6" blocks on this post so now all the patterns are posted.

http://carolynchristmasdesigns.blogspot.com/2014/01/circle-dance-4-and-10-square-patterns.html

I've saved these two for last because the math on these is a little different from all the others. The others all start with 14 dc and increase in multiples of 14. The 2" circle starts with 12 dc, and the 6" circle starts with 16 dc. The reason for this is that, for the 2" circle, 14 does not divide evenly by 4 to make a square, so I used 12. For the 6" circle, I needed the last round to be divisible by 4, and 14 x 3 is not divisible by 4 so I used 16. Handy the way it all works out, isn't it?

I hope you're getting along nicely with your afghan blocks. My project is going well and I can hardly resist starting another one! Next week I'll post about sewing the blocks together.

Putting All Circle Dance Patterns in One Post

Sorry to keep moving things around. I've had a request to put all the square patterns into one blog post, which I thought was a fine idea, so I've placed all the patterns so far into this post:

http://carolynchristmasdesigns.blogspot.com/2014/01/circle-dance-4-and-10-square-patterns.html

When I add the 2" and 6" patterns, I'll add them to this same post.

12" Square Fix

Fixed a mistake in rnd 8 of the 12" square. Sorry about that!