September 1, 2020

I love the book on which this CAL is based and I’ve also enjoyed the CALs in the past. I decided to go with the cheaper colour crafter version in Entomology colourway just in case it is beyond me. I’ve already made the hotel of bees shawl in a Whirl.
Just need to finish my Coral Story Blanket first!

September 18, 2020

I watched the video and began my gauge piece yesterday. My 5 mm hook felt enormous and I did not like the way the stitches formed with the Colour Crafter. The spokes of round 2 are definitely slanting. I didn’t do the last round. I think I’m going to undo and start again with a 4.5 mm hook. I’ve not used colour crafter before and I’m a bit surprised at all the joins in the yarn. One of my balls has at least 3 visible in the new ball so I’m hoping that they are all at the start. I’ve also ordered some Clover Armor hooks in sizes 4.5 and 5 mm as I realise after using my lovely Clover 4 mm hook a lot recently, that my cheap set are not as nice to use and split the yarn much more easily. It was a surprise to find out how much difference a nice hook makes to the crochet experience.
I made a little card with yarn samples on it to help with remembering the colours. I printed a screenshot from the tips and tricks document and then glued it to carboard from an old Amazon package. Holes were made with an old compass that my children had for school.

September 19, 2020

I’ve had several goes at the swatch now. I think I realised that I probably did need a 5 mm one
As luck would have it my new clover hook arrived today and so I had another go. Watched the video again and realised that I was placing the dc on the last round in the wrong place. I think it is correct now and the gauge is just under 10cm. The clover hook made a huge difference to how the yarn formed the stitches.

September 21, 2020

I’ve got some Stylecraft and various other oddments hanging around so I decided to do another start with these. I might use this as my test piece to practice the stitches with - I’ll see how much yarn I have and how much there is to do with each pattern release. It will be completely random colours as I’m not sure what I’ve got in my drawer of yarn and I don’t really want to buy more. I’ll see how it goes.

September 29, 2020

I’ve just finished round 14 and I think all is OK. I’m finding that it is really important to look at the printed pattern and the video together. I have had to pull back a few rows along the way, including the last one. In the last row I realised that I hadn’t done the 2 chains between the corner bobbles. It looks much better with these in place. I think my joining needs some work too. Doing two in parallel means that I think I’m catching most of the mistakes - or at least I hope so!
Enjoying the process and not getting too caught up in racing to the end of each section. I think it is more fun to take your time and get it right.

October 5, 2020

I’m at row 27 and still enjoying the experience. I’ve only fudged one stitch so far so I’m counting that as ‘almost’ correct. I decided to drop a hook size after part 1. It doesn’t seem to have resulted in a baggy middle. I’ll see how I come out on size at the end of part 2. I’m managing to do some of it without the video which I’m quite pleased with. The bees were fun - I was trying to decide whether to do them in the yellow but stuck to the pattern in the end. I’m just on the butterflies now.

October 6, 2020

Have just unpicked most of my butterflies after adding the first mini rows of contrast colour. This exposed the fact that I’d got the stitches wrong in several of them so that they did not have the central ‘body’ and chains either side of the wings. Luckily I hadn’t cut the yarn so I was able to redo. I even left the slip stitches with the bits of yarn for row 27a in place so I can just redo them. I’m hoping that it will all be OK now and I’ll be able to move on.

October 8, 2020

The butterflies are now complete apart from the French knots. I’m really happy with how the blanket looks so far and I’m also trying to do as much as I can from the pattern without having to use the video. Generally I’m checking the video after I’ve had a go at the round myself.

October 12, 2020

Row 33 was my nemesis. I’ve no idea why this one caused me so much grief. I undid back to the top of the butterflies twice (I did spot a mistake one 5 treble cluster for the wings). I just kept running out of stitches on the section after the bee. In the end, I marked the 11, skip, 10, skip, 11 stitches with markers before I began the section and then used the markers to work out which stitches to skip. This worked perfectly and I should have done it earlier. It would have saved a lot of frogging and frustration. I’ve now just finished row 36 and have my eyes on the end of the current pattern release.

October 13, 2020

I’ve just completed the last round and I’m sewing in ends. Managed to finish the last ends while on a work conference call which was handy. I just need to do the French knots on the butterfly wings and then I’ll be ready for the next pattern update tomorrow.
I realised as I began the next round in part 3 that I had missed a couple of stitches in the corners - there should have been two dcs before and after each bobble. I had sewn the ends in well so I’ve decided to try and fudge it. I’m now about 4 rows into part 3 and I think it might be OK. We shall see.

October 16, 2020

Looks like I managed to get away with my mistake. The blanket is now a circle and I’m on the treble cluster row. A nice uncomplicated round - assuming the stitch count works out.

October 20, 2020

I’m now on the leaves and, after a bit of a shaky start, I’m really enjoying this part. I took the advice suggested on the facebook page and did the fpdtr, fptr together in the reverse direction so that the centre spine of the leaf remains uppermost. I think it looks neater possibly more leaf like. I do have the right number of stitches. I’ve been cutting each colour at the end of a round as I ended up with a counting issue when I was trying the carry the yarn. I’ve moved the starting point to an equivalent position a few leaves down so that I don’t end up with too many ends to sew in at the same place.

October 22, 2020

Used an online conference where I was just listening to the talks to sew in lots of ends. I’m nearly at the end of the leaf motifs. Having used the modification on the leaves, I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. It really helped at the beginning to make the leaves look neater but I’m not sure of the overall result. I’m not frogging though at over 400 stitches per round. Might think about sticking to the written pattern for my second attempt.

November 2, 2020

I took the advice on using a smaller crochet hook for the motifs. The Geodes are slightly above size with a 3.5 mm hook. I’ve done one agate motif but found using the brown yarn trick in artificial light so I’ll try and find a daytime to do the rest of those. The second row was a killer when it is hard to find the stitches. The quartz motifs seemed much simpler (though how are they octagon shapes? they seem like circles to me). I’ve done about 4 of those so far. I may carry on and do the motifs and corner pieces for my second blanket so that I remember what to do. I’m a bit behind on that one.

Update: I’ve just watched the video for the agates and realised that my lack of stitches was because I didn’t repeat a section…..much easier when you have 9 trebles instead of 6! Dark brown yarn in artificial light is still a killer though.

November 13, 2020

I’ve now got the 4 corners on and I’m about to create the diamond shapes. A few mistakes did come to light in the second row after the join but I think I’ve managed to fudge them so that the stitch count is now correct. There was one point on the outside edge that I got wrong in different ways twice - once with two many stitches and once with a cluster of 3 stitches missed. I skipped stitches to solve the first issue and added a little patch of stitches to solve the second issue. I don’t think it will matter in the scale of the whole project. Enjoying working on the whole blanket again rather than on smaller pieces as you can get more of a rhythm going.
I’ll have to decide about elephant ears soon.

November 14, 2020

At the end of part 4.

November 16, 2020

Started part 5 last night after completing the corners for my Mineralology colourway a bit in advance of the rest of the blanket. It is great to be doing relatively simple stuff for a few rounds. The instructions for each round are now several lines rather than several pages!

November 23, 2020

Up to round 81. Each round is now taking much longer just because the blanket is so huge and some are pretty hard on the wrists - particularly row 78. I’ve started the second ball of some of my colours - yellow, brown and green now but I think this might be the last time they are used so I’ll probably have plenty left. Each row does take quite a bit of yarn and on some of them I switched to a new ball rather than risk running out part way. Loved the elephants. Haven’t added ears to them yet. I might have a go and see what they look like.

November 25, 2020

Had an insomniac episode so got up in the early hours to finish the last row of part 5 and sew in all my ends. Ready for the last part with about 5 hours to spare. Used the blanket to keep me warm while I did a few more rows of the Minerology colourway.

December 5, 2020

This one has been on hold while I did the corners for my other Mineralogy colourway which will be a Christmas gift. I may end up finishing the other one first.

December 28, 2020

Almost at the end of the shells. Now trying to do this in tandem with my mineralogy colour way so that I finish them both together.

January 3, 2021

Up to row 102 and alternating with my mineralogy colourway so I get them both past the finish line. Will be a bit sad when they are both finished.

January 6, 2021

On the last side of the last row. I think I’ve put the ttr stitch in a different place than in the other colourway somehow. It looks OK though. Found one side where I’d missed a ttr so will have to add that retrospectively to make it match. Will probably start on the ends of both blankets this evening. It is just the last part that needs doing so not too many as there were lots of rounds where the colour was carried up the blanket. Will be sad to finally finish this project but I’m now thinking of projects to use up the huge amount of leftover yarn.