When I crochet, I often set up color rules for the project I am working on.

I don’t write them out. I just carry then in my head and apply them as I work my way through a project.

One of my more straightforward (for me) projects with its own set of color specification was a “Permuations Cat Runner” I designed. The idea was that I would put it on the back of the sofa where the cat always sat. One of my color rules was that I could us only eight and those eight colors would be used in a specific order with two variations on one granny square design that resulted in this first set of fifty-six squares:

and this second set of fifty-six granny squares:

As I started work on crocheting the corners of the ten squares needed to make a washable crochet purse using my “Crochetachella Square” design, I found that the lack of any color rules at all was making the crochet quite a slog.

I was looking for some kind of balance, but without any color rules in place, I was trying a lot of things with no clear vision. I liked the work I had done:

But it took a lot of frogging and recrocheting to get there. At the rate I was going, it seemed like the purse might not get done in time for summer, let alone this coming Sunday.

However, when I took a break from the work, I got an idea for some rules that were less rigid than they had been for the permutations project, but they were rules nonetheless, and when I implemented them, the work began to go more quickly. The result was subtle, but to my eye, effective.

I laid them out and got this picture:

Then realized that they were not oriented as they would be for the purse, and so I turned and rearranged them to get some idea of how they would look when assembled:

I am more than a little excited to see how this bag is coming together.

I still have to choose a color for the joining and figure out just exactly how I will crochet the straps, but I will see it through to the end, one stitch at a time.