I spent a good amount of my crochet time today attempting to work out the particulars of how I will join the cookies for the cookieghan.

After coming up with one solution that was more satisfactory than the others, but still not perfect, I decided to set it aside for a bit to allow ideas to percolate, and I then got out my copy of 101 Crochet Squares by Jean Leinhauser and made an effort to get caught up in the crochet-a-long I am involved with.

With my 5.0 mm hook in hand and various balls and skeins of yarn nearby, I got to work on the most recently assigned motif, Square 33.

This ended up being a more interesting square than I originally anticipated, in large part because of the construction of the central floral motif. The 16 single crochet stitches that comprise the first round allow for a flower with 8 petals:

The next two rounds gave the central flower and interesting, and unexpected look:

While the final round offered the opportunity to frame motif:

I enjoyed working on this square and am looking forward to using some of the things I learned from making it in a future project.

From there, I continued with the octagonal theme and made Square 67. Picking up where I had left off, I used a 5.0 mm hook and the same cherry red that I had used for the last round of Square 33:

I attempted to break out of my color habits, and used a pastel-ish orange for the second round which was comprised of densely packed double crochet stitches that made the motif ruffle a bit:

The third round, which I worked with boysenberry, was a lot of fun to make and helped to ameliorate some of the the ruffling of the second round:

Round four, however, seemed to bring back some of the chaos and unruliness of round two:

all of which was resolved with the final three rounds:

Both of these squares were fun to work, and each had its charm. I can hardly wait to see how the lessons learned from working these two squares (both based on multiples of eight) are expressed in my future crochet endeavors.