Willpower is a limited resource, and today, I found mine to be more limited than usual.
Perhaps if I had read Tara Parker-Pope’s New York Times blog post from December of 2006 on how to boost one’s willpower this morning while I ate my breakfast, the outcome of my day might have been different, but after a morning spent running errands and an early afternoon spent diligently working on my prescribed projects, my willpower deserted me and I succumbed to the siren call of the groovyghan.
The designer, Tracy St. John, has made this magnificent project available as a free PDF, and once I succumbed, I had my computer out and was busy reading though the directions. Knowing that any one of the three motifs that comprise a substantial portion of the afghan would be a suitable place to start, I settled on the dot motif.
I started, as the directions suggested, with an H hook and a selection of seven of my favorite Red Heart Super Saver colors at my side. Using the orange color known as Pumpkin, I set to work. By the time I had completed the fourth of 8 rounds, I was concerned that my gauge was off. While the designer’s notes said that gauge is not hugely important, I didn’t want to make an afghan so large that it was unmanageable, so after measuring to confirm what I already knew, I frogged the circle and started over with a 4.5mm hook.
In no time, I had completed the first round and was ready to join the last stitch of the round to the first:
and put the hook through the third chain of the the first three chains made:
wrapped the yarn over the hook, and pulled it through:
From there, I continued with the orange yarn for four more rounds until I had this magnificent orange dot.
Inspired by the photo of the groovygahn at Ms. St. John’s website, I took squared off my orange dot with Red Heart Super Saver, Cherry Red:
I know I am going to love making this project. Just the pieces of it bring me great happiness. They are, at once, elegant, simple, and completely imbued with joy.
It takes a pretty groovy afghan to do all that.
