Welcome to week 5 of the Lotus Moon Tiles Crochet Along. Let’s get straight to business.
This week’s assignment:
Round 14 of octagons while joining as you go OR round 14 of octagons and join octagons with your choice of join method
Things you should consider before starting this week’s work:
- The pattern uses the Single Crochet Join-as-You-Go method from The Hat & I. This is a free tutorial that you can download from Ravelry.
- You don’t have to use this join. You can use whatever join you want to use, but keep in mind that the octagons fitting with the squares and triangles can present some problems when working around and joining corners.
- This is a “hook out” method (meaning you take your hook out of the loop and put it back in, like in a popcorn stitch) and not everyone likes those. They can be difficult to do. Some people find it bothers their hands or wrists. But if you’ve never tried this before, I say give it a go! You might find you really like it. In fact there’s a lot to like about this joining method…
- The pros of this join far outweigh the cons:
- It’s a solid join, not lacy. I think that this pattern lends itself to a nice solid join. When I was deciding what join would be appropriate I specifically stayed away from anything lacy because I didn’t think it had the right feel. I wanted to give the feeling of flowers floating on water and openwork just wasn’t doing that for me.
- It’s a really strong join. You’re not going to notice any weak points along the join. It’s not going to feel flimsy or delicate.
- It’s springy! without being loose. It’s basically the same springiness as your other stitches so it doesn’t feel out of place. It’s not tight like a slip stitch join or sewing the pieces together.
- It has an awesome twisted ropy texture that very subtly frames your work and add another element of texture to the project.
- It lays perfectly flat! No really, it’s perfectly flat. No ridge at all.
- It doesn’t add any size to your motifs – this can be plus or a minus depending on how you look at it, but for me this is always a plus. I like to know exactly what my project is going to look like without having to imagine what the join is going to do to it. This join is straightforward design-wise, in that it doesn’t really affect the design of the pieces you already have.
- When joining our pieces together – consistency is the most important thing. Make sure all of your sides have the correct number of stitches (you’ll wish you did if you come to a join that isn’t matching up).
- If you used a slip stitch to join round 13 (rather than an invisible join) don’t let it mess up your stitch count and join.
- Weave your ends in on your motifs before you join them – it’s so much easier than trying to do it on a huge afghan.
- Use your stitch markers! They make it easier to see where the chain 1 corners are. And leave them in even after the octagons are joined. In fact, they’re much more useful for joining the smaller motifs than they were for joining the octagons.
Resources:
There’s just one video tutorial for this week and it’s about the sc join-as-you-go method. I did a demo for joining the octagons so you can see how it works and how the corners are supposed to go. I’ll demo the square and triangle joins too, but over the next couple weeks, because their corners are trickier than the octagons. There’s just one catch – you have to join the Facebook Lotus Moon CAL group because this is part of the exclusive CAL content. Sorry/not sorry. Just the way it is.
That’s it for this week! I hope you’re enjoying making your afghan and that weaving all the ends from the past 4 weeks hasn’t sent you over the edge. Hang in there! The ends will keep coming, but it just gets more and more fun from here on out.
