this was one of my fav squares from the #crochetforpeacecal

isn’t it cool that crochet can be a language to communicate a feeling or a message? a little hook and pull here and there and who knows how it adds up to the bigger picture.

和平 means peace in chinese btw

Somebody on a discord I'm in posted the pattern for this cute li'l 6" square. Went together surprisingly fast.

Economical Druthers

A local volunteer community encourages people to donate knitted or crocheted squares that can be made into blankets. Those blankets are then given to people who need them, often to people in shelters and temporary housing.

As someone who likes to crochet while watching TV, I saw this as a beneficial use of both my time and miscellaneous leftover yarn. Accordingly, last winter I donated a couple of blankets I had made and I also put together squares that others had made.

This winter I happened upon some very inexpensive yarn at a thrift store and used it to make squares that I hoped would one day become a blanket. I also used up my remaining supply of leftover yarn and these together created 68 squares.

As I looked at the instructions I had received from the volunteer group, I realized I didn’t have enough squares for a queen-size blanket which was their preference. A queen size requires 90 eight-inch squares and a twin size requires 54. When I first asked about this, my assumption was that they would need more twin-size blankets but it seems that there are more families in need than single individuals. So, the polite suggestion was that the larger blanket would be of more use.

My dilemma, then, was what to do with my inadequate supply of squares. Should I make more squares or donate what I had? I decided to donate what I had, but when I got to the volunteer centre I was told that they no longer accepted donations of squares! They already had lots of squares in storage and, instead, needed volunteers to put squares together. I said I would be happy to do that and they said they would be in touch when they had taken a batch out of the storage facility. They also said that they no longer had a supply of yarn that they could give me; the yarn fund had been exhausted.

My 68 squares, which were not quite enough for a blanket, still needed additional squares so I visited a couple of local thrift stores to see if they had any yarn I could use to finish the project. Unfortunately, I was surprised to find that the price of the donated skeins was quite high. It was too high to be a bargain and almost as much as I would pay for yarn on sale at a local department store. I was torn. I wanted to finish the blanket and I wanted to support the thrift store, but I didn’t want to pay so much for miscellaneous yarn. I would rather pay a little more and choose the texture, weight, and colour than I preferred.

I went online to find out the sale prices for yarn at the local craft stores and I also checked out Amazon. My preference is to shop local when possible, but when you are trying to put together a blanket out of leftover yarn, you lean towards the least expensive option. I ended up ordering from Amazon, even though I would much rather have bought from a local charity or craft store.

Sometimes, your druthers are just not economical.

Plotting and planning…

(This is the first complete proof of concept, there is a lot of tweaking and improvements still necessary. African Flower center is from https://joscrochetpad.blogspot.com/2020/12/project-5-african-flower-motif.html)

Something @vaviurka requested.

It's apparently called a wet block. It is used for straightening a granny square.

A granny square is a square piece of crochet with hole patterns. I swear these are real crocheting terms and I'm not making this up.

I dug out a project that I started a year ago. I'm trying to get it blocked now. I might need to steal some of my husband's foam board for blocking.

I did another one.

I'm not hyperfocused. You're hyperfocused.

I made another one. Had to unwind that purse strap (and may end up "tinking" the whole thing tbh) to have enough yarn. Kinda fun, although the crossed DCs near the edge were a bit of a pain.