Crochet Flower Throw

The "Flowery Throw" was one of the politer terms my family called this, my first, crochet throw. When I started it in Spring 2009 I was working silly hours running my own business and I really didn't have the time or energy to do anything for myself.

Flowery Throw and Simple Border

One day I came across the lovely Rosehip Blog (where the sideways distraction of my pillowcase edging also originated) and Beata's crocheted Flower Square caught my eye. I had some acrylic double knit around the house, and a crochet hook so out of interest I crocheted up my first square to see if I could remember how to crochet, the last time was in my teens making granny squares so at least 25+ years ago. I stopped crocheting as there was nothing inspiring pattern wise back then, I remember spending weeks trying to find a pattern somewhere, anywhere, to crochet a sweater, to no avail. Doilies, lace and tablecloths were your lot!

A bit like riding a bike though, you don't forget. Every now and then I would make a little flowery square, every little square had 6 ends. Mostly I crocheted in the car or on the annual family holiday in France. I would make 20 squares in a 2 week spurt, and then none for six months. They lived in a basket and gathered dust, every now and then eyeballs were rolled!

I sold my business last year (I managed to get out quits so no I am not rolling in it....) and started to search for work, the good part was that I finally had some "me" time and I picked up my knitting needles again and finished an aran jacket at the end of the winter. That was an achievement, no problem knitting then! After that triumph I taught myself to knit socks and a couple of simple shawls as presents (with too many mistakes) and I declared myself a yarn addict again after so many years.

I spied my UFO (UnFinished Objects in the crafting world lingo) squares and decided to put my mind to finishing the blanket. At that point I had 60 squares, and 360 ends.

360 ends!!

So I sat down and made myself sew in those ends, and then every six squares I sewed in the ends.

If you stay on top of the ends life is so much better and you don't put off making more squares as you're dreading the ends!!

End of ends.....I have learnt my lesson. Never will I let my ends build up again.

My squares curled though, opinion on Ravelry was that you don't need to block acrylic, so I didn't. I decided I needed a couple more colours of yarn (Stylecraft Special DK) and bought some darker blue, bright yellow and mint green and bemused myself working out permutations and combinations of how many squares I need to do to have all the variations, if there are 10 colours and 3 positions for each colour. That size blanket was too big!

...and we had nice weather back in March and April and I did some crocheting outside, bliss! I decided I would just double crochet (US single crochet) the squares in strips using white and then join the strips in the same way. I stopped at 180 squares (15x12), it's not a large blanket at all after all that effort as each square is only about 8cm (3") 

 It's easier said than done laying out a random pattern, I didn't really succeed as I must have swapped some of my carefully labelled piles as I do have the same colour flowers together in a couple of places.

 We had sun back in May when I was edging! The edging was very quick and painless.

I did have a dither, as you can see the flowers pop one way better than the other but that seemed to me to be the wrong side, so I joined with the curled edge towards me and the white border is now really the wrong side and I wanted that to be the right side, but it's not really a problem as the other side looks good too.

Edging is 3 rounds of double crochet in white, 1 in fucsia, 1 white, 1 lime green, so 6 in total. You can see the difference between the wrong right side and the right wrong side....no I have no idea either which is which so it doesn't really matter!

I've taken these pics today with the vivid setting on my camera, and close up for some of them (the flower macro setting)

Oh look wonky basket under bench in conservatory has coat hangers in for the washing.  I can't do staged photos!

 The flowers do pop better on the wrong side.

 Only one more photo honest!

Flowery Throw finished 25th May 2012, took over three years but less than 2 months once I put my ar*e into gear!

FINISHED SIZE: approx 120x105cm (47"x41") each square around 3" Cot size but not intended for a cot. It's over the back of the bench in the conservatory.

YARN:  A ball each Pale blue, darker blue, lime green, mint green, pale pink, shocking pink, pale yellow, dark yellow, red, cream and a couple of balls of white. All 100% acrylic DK, no idea of usage as I already had most of it. Recommend Stylecraft Special DK.

HOOK SIZE: 4mm

PATTERN: Flower Square

HAPPY HOOKY INDEX: 7/10

PS I now realise how lovely Stylecraft Special DK is for a very economical 100% acrylic yarn, the other colours were stiff and squeaky but the Stylecraft is soft and light and feels like it has some cotton in.  Since there are 50+ colours in the Stylecraft range guess what the next project will be made with? No prizes...

PPS Thank you for humouring me by reading it all and apologies for picture overload. I have been messing about with camera settings.