August – Square Fifteen

August – Square Fifteen

I know that I said I would start in on the parasol once I got the July squares done, but time just keeps getting away from me and I’ve had to re-prioritize my projects.  If I want to get The Granny Square Project done in time to give it as a Christmas present, I’ve got to go ahead and see if I can finish the squares in the next month here.  I’m not sure how long it is going to take me to join them all.

I have a couple of small birthday presents that I want to see if I can whip up real quick this week.  I’ve also been working on the dress I wanted to make for my daughter.  Unfortunately I ran out of yarn and had to order the color online because I can’t find it in the stores and the dress is sitting in the cupboard waiting to be finished.  And finally, I’ve got something that I need to crochet for the four of us for my son’s 1 year pictures.  I won’t say more than that because it’s going to be a very fun surprise.  But I need to get started on that too!

In the mean time, I’m afraid the parasol will just have to wait till this winter, likely after little man’s birthday party.  I did however, find a pattern that I like for it and I really can’t wait to get started.

As a result, here is August’s first square.  The pattern can be found here.  This is another one I’ve got mixed feelings on.  Instead of working the granny clusters in a chain space, it calls for just working them between the previous row’s clusters.  That always feels very clumsy and tight to me.  There were also some instructions missing in the first round that I had to figure out, and each round starts unnecessarily (to me anyway) in the middle of the corner cluster instead of at the beginning  of it.  Normally you would slip stitch over to the corner space to start the next round, where as here you’ve often created the corner space by completing an hdc in the top of  beginning chain 3/dc.  I always hated joining that way, but it’s probably just a personal preference.  I had to leave off the last row to stay within my seven inches.  And my last row is worked with half-double crochets instead of dc’s.  I don’t really like the rounded off corners and I think I might go back and change that.  It would probably fit better with the rest of the squares anyway.  But this one also has the front post stitches that I love again to give the 3-d appearance of red ribbon behind the black frame.  I really like how that looks.

I have to actually buy some yarn for the next square I have planned because I don’t have the color I need.   I need some dark burnt orange and that’s not a color I typically work with.  I do believe this will be the first yarn I’ve bought for this project.