BAWJ2019 - Weeks 7 and 8!

Hi everyone! 

It's March! How can it possibly be March already - 2019 is zipping by at a terrifying rate. We've survived two weeks of multiple night shifts here and Miss Allie has her first tooth! 

I have been working on my miniaturisation project over the last few weeks in between feeding the baby 7 times a day (hurgh I liked it better when she just had milk), persuading her to have naps and keeping up with work. So far I have 5 tiny monsters, and #6 is in progress but having a rest while I make a hippo for a lovely friend's upcoming tiny human! 

This week's post is a bit later than usual because Square 8 of the BAWJ2019 took me somewhat longer than previous weeks for reasons which I will describe below... 

If you want to join in on BAWJ2019, check out Julie's Facebookgroup, blog and Ravelry Board for more information.

WEEK 7 - JOYFUL by TAMARA KELLY

Pattern: https://www.mooglyblog.com/joyful-afghan-square-12/ 

Yarn colours: Krypton, Silver, Teal, Mint

This square was ok! I did alter the instructions slightly so I didn't have quite so many silver ends from the overlay rounds, just by starting in a different spot. 

It worked up fairly well, although it irritates my symmetrical mind that the mandala isn't straight on the square. 

I almost like the back better - the combination of colours and stitches (and the beautiful Batik yarn) gives it an impressionist look!


WEEK 8 - MOONLIGHT GARDEN SQUARE by ANNA PISKORZ

Pattern: https://aloopofsunshinecrochet.com/block-a-week-cal-2019-moonlight-garden-square/


Yarn colours: Phosphorus, Cream, Raspberry, Gold, Violet

Hoo boy, this was an interesting square. Pretty? Yes, I'll give it that. I liked the way the circular centre was squared up - very clever and much less awkward than other methods I have seen. 

I do not want to seem ungrateful because these lovely designers are offering squares for the BAWJ2019 for free, but... it makes me really disappointed when designers don't take pride in presenting a great, well-designed, well laid out pattern. And this one was a real challenge, not in a fun way. 

Julie noted as a "fun fact" in her introductory blog post that the designer has never made an afghan before! This became very obvious when there were two rows that had 16ch strings along the back. It's true, they aren't visible from the front. But as anyone who has ever made or used an afghan can tell you, having such long loose strings along the back can be very unpleasant for the toes as well as affecting the tension of the square! I ended up catching the chain strings into the following row to try and mitigate this a bit. But, you can see how the overlay crochet is sitting right up off the surface of the underlying stitches due to the tension of the chain strings behind. 

There were some issues with the pattern as well. In some places the colour change was not marked clearly, and the layout was not super easy to follow. 

The stitch counts and instructions for Rounds 18 and 19 didn't match. It was very confusing, caused a few bouts of ripping back and retrying before I could make it work. In case you're making this and are as perplexed as I was, I worked Rounds 18 and 19 as follows:

Round 18 - *working in BLO, hdc in first two st of one side including the first hidden st, 15 star stitches across, hdc in last two st, (hdc, ch2, hdc) in corner ch2sp*. repeat 4 times. (6hdc and 15 star st on each side) 

Round 19 - *hdc in first three st of one side including first hidden st (where Round 18 joined), hdc in top of Round 18 hdc to start first star st, 2hdc in eye of each star stitch, hdc in last 3 st, (hdc, ch2, hdc) in corner ch2sp* repeat 4 times (39 hdc on each side) 

More than one hdc round also twists a square quite badly because the top of the stitch is so far to the right of the post, as you can see in the back shot of this square:

Hopefully the power of peer pressure will pull it back into line once we join them all together.

Onwards and upwards!