Bluebelling

As I sit in my chair in the sitting room and look out of the french doors, all I can see are Bluebells. It is like my own little Bluebell wood (without the actual wood part- does a small Yew bush count?), a sea of azure as far as the garden's edge.

Combined with the brilliant blue of the sky this morning, it was a pretty lovely thing to sit and crochet in front of.

I love photographing Bluebells from beneath, it makes them look like giant trees- which would be a fantastic thing wouldn't it? Gigantic Oak tree sized Bluebell stems!!! Just think of it, the Bumble Bees would be ecstatic.

Other colours are also appearing in the garden, we are starting to get brightly coloured Tulips opening their petals to reveal the centre of the flower, and different types of Daisy-esque flowers cheerfully smiling from their patio pots.

Having said in my previous blog post that I wouldn't be putting together my triangular circles any time soon, I changed my mind and started playing with how best to put the shapes together.

The first attempt didn't go very well. I thought I would use a slip stitch all the way around the block central shape, and then work between the 'petals' individually with the same stitch. This started out looking quite ok, it was a relatively invisible seam as all of the bulk of the stitch was inside the block shape and barely showed on the other colours. However, when all of the shapes were crocheted together, I realised that the slip stitch was so tight, I had made a little bowl in the middle.

And a little bulge on the other side!!! Not quite the look I was after really, although it was quite funny.

After ripping it all out and starting again, I attempted using the next stitch size up, and worked the same way around the shapes, but in double crochet. This worked much better as the stitch was looser, and actually I really like the extra rim it has created inside the block colour. It lies really flat but adds a new texture and feature to the pattern. The spokes between the multicoloured blocks are all crocheted on individually, which is creating lots of tails to darn in, but they are worth it.

Of course, once I had done one flower, it was straight into the second and third flowers, each time matching the joining colour with the central block colour. Thankfully once joined, my circles do take on a more triangular appearance and I am thrilled with how it is looking!!