The arctic chill that greeted me Tuesday morning while I waited with my youngest son at the bus stop for his first day of school after a long, luxurious break has begun to lift, and while I was waiting for relief from the cold, I continued work on the textured squares afghan inspired by a project of the same name in Magic Motif Crochet by Maggy Ramsay.

The project is built on the square seen here:

Four of these squares are then joined into one:

The four small squares are then bordered with six rounds of a single crochet stitch made by working through the back loop only of the previous round and turning the work after each round is completed. This results in a border that extends the ridge texture of the foundation motif.

Yesterday and today I devoted my crochet time to piecing together foundation motifs and adding a border as needed. Here is how far I got making new pieces (click on any of the images to see an enlarged view in a new window):

Here is one view of those new pieces pictured with the previously completed two large squares, each large square being composed of four medium squares:

Here is another view of those same pieces:

And here is an annotated view that highlights the additional designs created by the ridges of texture:

This addition of the border forms a design element that both transcends and circumscribes the design it is extending, just as crochet both transcends and circumscribes our daily lives.

Video Tutorial: How to make the crochet textured square/magic motif