Busy busy weekend

Weekends like this — where every minute is spoken for — make my mind harken back to long ago days when I read what I think of as Richard Scarry’s “busy books” to my two older children.

At the time, life seemed very full, and the drawings that illustrated the stories were both exquisite and dizzying. The details alone told the story, and the illustrations and accompanying text transported me right into the pages of the book.

By the time my youngest child was born, the two older children were established readers and chose other reading material for their brother that they thought would be of greater interest. So instead of so much Richard Scarry, he got more Calvin and Hobbes, as well as a lot of Advanced Placement History.

But this weekend, I was like one of the characters in one of the “busy books.” There was laundry to be washed, errands to be run, shopping to be done, and a piece of crochet to be documented (more on that in Tuesday’s blog post). It wasn’t until early this afternoon that I finally sat down to work on the fourth (and final) crochet square for the “How to crochet like Olek” tutorial I have been putting together.

So at the end of a harried but pleasant weekend, I plied my craft, and in the late afternoon that looked even later because of the rain and cloud cover, I finished the fourth square (bottom), seen here it is with it’s companion — the third square (top):

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Two more double crochet squares in the style of Olek

I finally had all four squares needed:

Using a 4.5 mm hook and Red Heart Super Saver cornmeal yarn, I put the right sides of the two new squares together and joined them to each other:

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Two columns of two crochet squares each

Now ready to join the two columns of two squares each, as with the top to bottom join, I put the two columns of crochet with right sides together:

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Put the right sides together

Secured a contrasting color yarn with a slip knot to the 4.5 mm hook I was using:

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Blue yarn secured with a slip knot to a 4.5 mm hook

and inserted the hook through the sides of the corresponding double crochet stitches as shown:

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Insert hook though the side of the corresponding double crochet stitches

Then as I had with the top to bottom joins, I completed a single crochet stitch and chained one:

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Complete the sc and chain 1

Which I repeated until I had worked my way across the length of the join:

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The completed side seam join in blue

Here is a detail of the back of the seam:

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Detail of the back of the side seam join

a detail of the front of the seam:

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Detail of the front of the side seam join

as well as this overview of the four squares all joined:

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The four squares joined in Olek fashion

So why have a crochet tutorial like this?

My reasons are twofold.

One is that I hope other crocheters will use it to create their own crochet murals and crochet posters using the switchboard tool provided at Love Across the USA or their own imaginations.

The other is that I hope this inspires and gives people the confidence necessary to sign up for one of Olek’s workshops as she makes her way around the United States. Not only will you get to experience the power and empowerment of crochet in action, but you’ll also get to get see first hand how you can start to change your world, one stitch at a time.