Lotus Moon CAL – Week 2

Hi everyone! It’s officially week 2 of the Lotus Moon Tiles Crochet-Along. This week we are finishing our flowers and your assignment is as follows:

Rounds 4 through 6 of the octagon motifs.

Talking Points

There are a few things I’d like to draw your attention to for this week’s assignment. This is all the stuff that is in the video I posted in the Facebook group.

• When you make a beginning puff stitch it doesn’t really have the top two loops. You’ll notice when you ch1 to close your beg puff it will have two loops from that ch1, but compare it to the other puffs and you’ll see it’s actually lopsided. When you come back around to join, slip stitch to the ch1 that closed your puff and let that ch1 act as the other two loops to complete your beginning puff. (Note: I don’t bother with an invisible join for this round.)
• I’m adding my video of how to do puff stitches to the list of this week’s resources, but you must keep in mind that it is slightly different from the puff stitches I make in Lotus Moon Tiles. The video calls for you to (yo, insert hook and pull up a loop) 4 times, but Lotus Moon Tiles only calls for you to do it 3 times. This makes your puff stitches just a little bit smaller so that they can all fit in the small space.
• Round 4 is entirely puff stitches which drive some people nuts, but they don’t have to. Thanks to CAL group member Carolann Dunaske for bringing this to our attention. A 2dc cluster works exceptionally well throughout the pattern in place of puff stitches. You won’t get all the texture and puffiness of the puff stitches, but they’ll still look great and could potentially save you a lot of time and frustration if puff stitches are your enemy, or maybe just not your style.

2dc cluster: (yarn over, insert hook into indicated space, yarn over and pull up a loop, yarn over and pull through 2 loops on hook) twice, yarn over and pull through all 3 loops on hook, ch1 to close

• Rounds 5 & 6 are appropriate rounds to use your invisible join skills.
• Your flowers will not lay flat for a few more rounds. They should curl a lot after round 6.
• You can go ahead and weave all of your ends in after round 6. Future rounds will not provide better opportunities for this, so go ahead and get them out of the way.
• I’ve had a lot of questions about invisible joining to standing stitches, and I’ll be honest, I left it out of the invisible join video specifically because I wasn’t convinced I’d come up with the best method for doing this. I tried a lot of different ways to get that invisible join as invisible as possible this past week, but in the end I tried my original method and I still think it’s the neatest. Let me know what you think and let me know if you have your own method and I’ll give it a try.

Resources:

Puff Stitch Tutorial. Keep in mind, the puff stitches in the video use (yo, insert your hook and pull up a loop) 4 times, but the Lotus Moon Tiles pattern tells you to do it only 3 times.

Picot Tutorial

Invisible Join to Standing Stitches Tutorial

(Hint: you’ll want to be familiar with working into the third loop for the invisible join to standing stitches technique. See my blog post about the third loop here.)