Crocheting in Public

Yesterday I met my friend Faith and her daughter at Michaels & then we went next door to Border's. We got iced coffees (Kahlua Mudslide Freeze) and crocheted for about 3 hours. I spent some time looking at new crochet and knit magazines. I saw 1 or 2 things of interest, but not enough to pay $8 for a magazine. Crochet! has plenty of interesting patterns in each issue.

I worked on my Jasmine doily in Delta crochet. I haven't been happy with the way the side blossoms look on this doily. I don't remember having problems with the blossoms in the other projects, so decided to review several lessons. I found my problem - a bad effect from good progress. I worked very hard to learn how to work from the charts, and I've mastered it well enough that I was working only from the diagrams, no words, on this doily. But I was misplacing-placing a single crochet that was supposed to come after the 3rd petal, I had it between the 2nd and 3rd, which left a gap between those petals. I went back to the lesson on the side blossoms (lesson 2) found the misplacing-placed chain. I then decided that it was bugging me enough that I had to go back to the last round before the blossoms and re-work. So after 3 hours at Borders and another hour or so at home, my progress on the doily was night stood at Negative 6 rounds! I worked a little on this today, and I've gotten to -4 rounds.

I realized what I want to use to help with designing in Delta. I just happen to have some in my supplies, too. Hexagonal graph paper!! I know, no one else just happens to have hexagonal graph paper at their house. But, I teach mathematics, including a fun class on recreational math, and hexagonal graph paper happens to be the best thing to create Pascal's triangles. So this weekend's fun will involve hexagonal graph paper, colored pencils and crochet designing!