My Crochet Along Square

I am so excited to see all the hype for this CAL! I love reading everyone’s comments and questions and seeing beautiful base blocks y’all are coming up with on FB and Ravelry groups! Our Ravelry group now has over 1,000 members!!! And members’ support for each other both on FB and Ravelry has been phenomenal!

I started working on the pattern for this CAL at the beginning of this year and have made 4 prototypes so far.  I am currently  working on 2 more as I make sure, along with my wonderful testers, the written pattern is correct.  But all this excitement in the air is making me want to crochet along with YOU when the CAL starts on August 9!

Choosing the yarn and color palette is always a challenging for me but for this CAL, I am going to pull out my very special new yarn, Linen Soft from Scheepjes.  I have been drooling over this yarn ever since I bought a Flight of Fancy CAL Hummingbird kit.  (Just this morning, I was visiting Wink’s blog (A Creative Being), and was reminded that her blog about opening this gorgeous kit was THE reason why I ordered it.)  I love working with cotton and linen mixes. Linen Soft has just the right amount of softness of cotton and body/texture of linen.  I love it!

I also saw Esther’s awesome intro video for the CAL and was in awe how pretty her square was turning out using this yarn.

As for selecting a pattern, I knew I found the perfect center for my CAL when I was making my small market bag in memory of Wink with her beautiful Picot Mandala.

Picot Mandala in Linen Soft

I only used one color for my market bag, so it is fun to play with the gorgeous colors from the Hummingbird kit.

(Don’t look too closely – I made a mistake in one spot and had to do some “surgery”…)

Squaring Up Wink’s Picot Mandala 

To square her up, I tried a few different ways, but I really wanted to keep the picots, and this is what I came up with.

Here is what I did after finishing the mandala…

• Round 1 – all stitches worked in picot:
  • (sc, ch 3, sc) in one picot (corner made);
  • **ch 5, sc in picot**; repeat ** to ** 6 times; ch 5; – one side made
  • repeat the above two steps for the remaining 3 sides;
  • sl st to the first sc
• Round 2 – all stitches worked in the chain spaces:
  • sl st to the corner chain space, **(2 tr, ch 1, 2 tr) in the corner;
  • in each of the following chain spaces, (4 dc, 2 hdc); (3 hdc, 3 sc); (4 sc); (4 sc); (4 sc); (3 sc, 3 hdc); (2 hdc, 4 dc)**;
  • repeat ** to ** for the remaining 3 sides;
  • sl st to the first st
• Round 3:
  • sl st to the corner chain space, **(tr, ch 1, tr) in the corner;
  • tr in the first 2 st, dc in the next 6 st, hdc in the next 6 st, sc in the next 12 st, hdc in the next 6 st, dc in the next 6 st, tr in the last 2 st**;
  • repeat ** to ** for the remaining 3 sides;
  • sl st to the first st
• Rounds 4 & 5:
  • sl st to the corner chain space, **(dc, ch 3, dc) in the corner;
  • dc in all st around until you reach the corner**;
  • repeat ** to ** for the remaining 3 sides;
  • sl st to the first st

(46 stitches per side)

I used a 4.00 mm hook and the block measures 10 3/4 inches across.

#MandalasForMarinke