These past few weeks as I have focused my efforts on moving the cookieghan project forward, I have been getting further behind in the the Jean Leinhauser 101 Crochet Squares crochet-a-long.

Since I am at a point where the work of cookieghan is, of necessity, going slowly, I decided to generate some finishing mojo by working on some of the squares from the too-long neglected crochet-a-long.

It had been about a month since I last worked on any squares, so I had four new overdue squares to choose from along with a number of overdue squares from weeks past. I ended up working on two squares from the past four weeks: Square 41 and Square 42.

For square 41, I went with a 5.0 mm hook and single color as was shown in the example, only I used Red Heart Super Saver lavender instead of a dusty rose.

I found the puff stitches on this square to be a bit awkward to make, and the chain-1 before the first corner puff stitch and after the second corner puff stitch required that I pay close attention to stitch placement on the next round, but when all was said and done, I liked the square:

If you were to use this square as a foundation for a throw or shawl, you might need to make several before your brain was trained to be on automatic pilot, but it a square with its own charms. I think it is a potential contender as the basis for a Babette-like blanket with squares made of varying sizes and random color changes.

With 41 completed, I moved onto Square 42 because it was right there in front of me. I continued to use the 5.0 mm hook, but turned to Mondrian for color inspiration:

While the exemplar for Square 42 was made with one color, I thought that using three colors better highlighted design features that would have been lost using just one color.

The third round of Square 42 was just 8 puff stitches and 8 chain-3 spaces, so the rounddid curl up, but round four both flattened out and squared of the motif.

Jean Leinhauser’s uses this technique of creating a shape to flatten out to good effect in many of her designs, and I think it is safe to say that it was a success here.

I will take any finishing mojo these two squares have created and use it to continue my work on the cookieghan, and stitch by stitch, I will get closer to my goal of completing it.