Around the time I began my hiatus, I finished clue 4 of 8 on the mystery afghan crochet-along I’ve been doing. After that I did clues 5 and 7, leaving 6 to afterward because it, like 8, joined motifs rather than adding them. Although I’ve made good progress on them, those two will come later – I’ve had to slow way down, so hopefully November, but possibly December.
Clue 1: Beginning of center medallion in dark purple, 12 dark gray popcorn grannies, two dark purple old rose hexagons.
I won’t lie, the beginning of the medallion was a little dull. This whole afghan has endless front post double crochet stitches. Fortunately I’m not in the crowd who were discussing having to space them out because of wrist pain. I’m not sure whether I’d ever made popcorn stitches before, but I’m pretty certain even if so I never made them for anything other than practice or experimentation. They have an interesting slightly pointed texture.
Clue 2: Two dark purple solid hexagons, four spiral hexagons in dark purple and either light purple or dark gray, two round ripple blocks in light purple and light gray, 10 light purple front post grannies.
I like spirals. However, the round ripple blocks might be my favorite motif of the entire afghan, though that may be primarily because of how the two light shades look together. In the photo, note that the solid purple hexagon on the right is upside-down and the one on top of the large motif is right-side-up. I got confused, probably in part because of the old rose hexagons of Clue 1.
Clue 3: Four light purple scallops blocks (the only motif worked in rows), two dark purple sun rays hexagons (I found these visually indistinguishable from the solid hexagons and may not have split them up correctly for assembly), four two-color hexagons in dark purple and either light purple or light gray.
The scallops were a nice diversion from all the rounds, and I like their look. Keeping my place in the four-row repeated pattern took occasional orienteering, though. I appreciate that JulieAnny spread out the smaller motifs so every clue had something to give you a break from the big motifs.
Clue 4: Middle of center medallion in dark and light purple, 12 light gray window pane grannies.
The window pane grannies were quite open, with first-round cluster stitches further condensed by third-round post stitches made on them. The middle of the medallion was tricky but interesting. I had to pull a decent amount of yarn out and redo sections. As painful as that was, I figured I shouldn’t spend as much time on this as I am and then let obvious errors go unfixed. It doesn’t make sense.
Clue 5: End of center medallion in light purple, 10 light purple front post grannies.
The end of the center medallion was no more interesting than the beginning, but at least the scenery was better. It was probably one of the largest single items I had worked on to date (well, I mended an afghan for my mother-in-law once, which I don’t think I showed here, and that clearly was larger). Front post grannies, well, are front post grannies.
Clue 7: Brick squares in light and dark purple, 8 dark purple old rose grannies.
The old rose grannies were nice, and indeed, the centermost rounds were identical to the old rose hexagons. The brick squares were the most frustrating and least satisfying motif of the entire afghan. After consistently failing to maintain anything approaching normal tension with 5 yarn overs and a hook insertion five rounds below, I made the tall stitches by yarning over once and pulling four loops up through strands of stitches in the four intervening rounds. It was still fussy and slow, and I’m still not thrilled, but my tension was much more reliable and I can hope that joining straightens them out.
If you want to follow along and get sneak peeks, I’ve kept ridiculously detailed notes on my Ravelry project page (Ravelry login required, I expect), and it’s one of only a few projects I’ve put on Rav as a work in progress. The previous ones were probably all from before I started this blog.