This morning, when I was taking my dog Clooney on his first walk of the day, it finally felt as if spring had arrived, and while the large clumps of yellow pollen that will blanket my neighborhood have yet to fall, I could tell by the way that air had lost its crisp edge that it is just a matter of time.
And now that Easter 2013 is about to draw to a close, when the sun rises tomorrow, I will have just seven working days to finish the cancer awareness ribbons and the sawtooth sunflower throw.
To that end, I did make sure that this weekend I kept up with my commitment of making at least 6 squares a day. Here is how the sawtooth sunflower throw looked this morning:
along with four extra squares I had gotten done Saturday:
Confident that I could prepare all of the holiday food and meet my sunflower square quota, I spent some time working on a crochet panorama sugar egg using a free pattern that Twinkie Chan and Norma Lynn Hood have created together.
Friday, I completed the “egg.”
Saturday, I starched the egg and stuffed it with plastic bags to hold the shape while it dried.
Saturday evening, I got to work on the puffed icing. I got this far before I called it a day:
I spent some of my morning finishing the icing, and completing work on the patch of grass:
I used worsted weight acrylic and a 3.5mm hook rather than the DK weight cotton and 3.25mm hook called for in the pattern, so my egg was a bit larger, and my patch of grass was definitely fuller than the examples shown with the pattern:
The grass is, however, a structurally important component of the project and helps it to hold its shape, probably more so if you have made it out of acrylic.
With the grass fitted into the egg as best as I could fit it in, I then added a couple of leaves and a few flowers for decoration:
and those few flowers brought me right back to one of the prongs of my current front burner project: The sawtooth sunflowers.
Here they are at sunset:
I still have to finish crocheting the last round of one of the two sunflowers before going to sleep if I am to keep to the schedule that I have set for myself, but that is an achievable goal, and one I intend to meet.
