Crochet Roses Update

Dear Yarnlings,

I'm at it again.

Oh yes, dear friends. Those mounds of poor, wrinkled up pink are the result of my feverish midnight frogging and mind-changing after a whole year of neglect on my crochet roses blanket.

I'll find a use for it though (I mean, please...pink wool is my spirit animal), so I don't feel that bad. Perhaps a little sorry for myself (on account of all of that extra work having gone to waste). Poor, poor me.

B, who is visiting, has become my unofficial yarn carder. That means he gets the lovely job of unravelling all my windy, messy, bunched up balls of abused yarn and then winding them back together into lovely, neat offerings that make my bookcase look just lovely! He has proven himself to be very useful. Good job, B.

But anyway, back to my long-suffering, neglected rose blanket.

The excuses are kind of lame:

1) Really, REALLY bad lighting in old apartment = things looking beauteous by dim inside light and like the Bride of Frankenstein once brought outside to get a better look. Not my happiest moment.

2) I finally discovered Breaking Bad (like, a decade after everyone else) and spent a good, oh...month or so indulging myself in back to back sessions of that.

3) I've been concentrating more on my illustration work in the last quarter of the year, so my trusty little hook(s) got relegated to their care-bear mug where they live with my Knitting needles (we won't even start on those. They are not even speaking to me, it's been that long).

4) Being completely WRACKED with indecision on colour (like, what else is new...am I right?). To which end, I have finally made a decision to go with...good old fashioned (but timeless classic) CREAM. Oh yes, dear yarnlings. Adventurous, I have proven not to be. It turns out, even I have a threshold of tolerance for pink on pink on pink.

Yup. Much better.

I do feel a bit happier with the cream framing the pinks, reds and purples. The jury is still out on the dark purple. I think I may dump it but keep the orchids and lilacs.

I have also been tossing around the idea of adding an extra row of HDC around the border to separate the flowers out juuussst a little bit more. I did it for one square absentmindedly and I decided that I really like the extra uniformity it gives. What do you think?

1 DC+2HDC outer vs 1 DC+1HDC

I look pretty swanky with my extra layer of HDC, even without blocking!

And now, here are some pics that I took the rest of that feverish evening/wee hours after my frogging had taken place:

And another one...

More gratuitous pics...

Just one or two more...isn't this pink just DELICIOUS though? 

I'm King Cole Big Value in "Bubblegum" - in case you were wondering. (Of course you were. Let's face it - I'm gorgeous).

Ok, ok!  I'm done!

I'm pretty happy with them as of today. But who knows what the next blog post will bring? Will Claire stick to her decision? Or will she frog them yet again? The series continues....

Hope you have had a lovely Christmas, Yarnlings! xxx