In the crafter world, there is a phrase that makes us feel better about ourselves. We’re “getting our Ph.D.–Projects Half Done.”

Right now, I’m on a quest to get my P.H.D.D.–moving my projects half done to done!

In the past week, I’ve completed two (plus one yarn stash buster).

I began this lap blanket last summer, but it quickly found its way to the bottom of my travel crochet bag. This is the Herringbone Texture Crochet Blanket pattern by Yarnspirations (available for free on their website). I used two cakes (plus a tiny bit) of Caron Cloud Cakes in Lagoon. This yarn is super soft and squishy. Add the texture of the stitch and it is even more so.

The pattern is worked on the front side only and I had to pay close attention to where I placed my stitches, but overall it was a pretty easy pattern. I would recommend it for intermediate crocheters.

The next blanket I finished had about 20 rows done when I picked it up. The Diamond Stitch Baby Blanket is another Free Pattern. I had recently done another blanket using this pattern in a purple ombre yarn. This time I was trying to use up yarn from another baby blanket. I held together two strands of Himalya Baby DK (I’m not having any luck finding this yarn online today, which leads me to believe it may have been discontinuted) and did 14 rows with each combination ending with 14 rows of the same colors I started with.

Two rounds of a simple single crochet border finished it off.

The third project I finished this week, I also started. It was a Saturday afternoon project from start to finish. I had some cotton yarn laying around (yes, literally laying around as I described in the last post about my messy crochet corner). I was thumbing through some crochet books I had lying around and I decided to make the Blooming Pot Holders from Crochet at Home.

I learned an important lesson when working on this: READ THE PATTERN. It seems obvious. It seems intuitive, but I was 2/3 of the way through this pattern when I realized that it was NOT actually missing half of the directions. Each round of directions is written first in the Front Loop Only and then in the Back Loop Only. I read far enough to understand the pattern, but completely missed the back loop insructions at the end of the lines (*hangs head in shame*). I was doing my best to fill in the gaps. It was there. It was there all along.

Read the pattern, people.

So, there you have it. One week. Three finished projects.

I have one more sitting next to the couch that I’ve been avoiding. It’s a great pattern and one that I need to finish writing. Dare I ask you to hold me accountable to finishing it this week?

We’ll see. We’ll see.

Keep on Stitching, Heidi