Earlier this month when I set my intentions for the new year, I had one goal: to finish more projects than I start.

As part of that effort, I am working to fall no further behind than I was when the new year started on a crochet-along at Ravelry based on Jean Leinhauser’s 101 Crochet Squares.

So today, after completing the seemingly endless chores that had accumulated over the weekend, I checked to find out what the square for the week was, and learned that it was Square 60.

As pictured in the book, square 60 is a 6-round square made using 2 colors. By the time I got to working on it, there was not a whole lot of time before sunset, so I decided to work with just two colors. I settled on Red Heart Super Saver perfect pink, and this vintage yarn that was part of my 2011 Halloween stash acquisition:

Using my 5.0mm hook and the perfect pink, I worked the first round which contained 32 double crochet stitches (among others) and ruffled quite a bit:

For the second round, I used the vintage Dawn Sayelle bluebells, and it seemed to ruffle even more:

For the third round, I again used the perfect pink, and here, the design finally flattened out and was substantially less unruly:

At this point, I felt the motif bore a strong resemblance to the Japanese flower motifs that are so popular, and I was tempted to leave it as it was, but since the point of this crochet-along is to finish all 101 squares, I proceeded to rounds 4, 5, and 6 with the bluebells:

One lesson I learned from this motif is that each round doesn’t need to be as flat as possible — that you can, make a design flatten as you move further out from the center. This creates the opportunity to use multiples that are easier to work with even if they don’t initially provide as flat a surface as you want for the final result.

I have no idea how Jean Leinhauser got done all that she got done, but her designs are genius in their simplicity.