The day after a picture perfect Fourth of July

As my regular readers know, I have recently traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the picture perfect post card day I arrived on gave way to a picture perfect postcard Fourth of July evening:

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on the Fourth of July 2018
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on the Fourth of July 2018

An article in today’s newspaper noted, “the rain missed the point,” and as a result, the fireworks went off without a hitch which brought me to today.

It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention, and as I am working with what I think of as a “traveling yarn stash,” I am without my usual retinue of colors.

Things were going well enough, but I found that my work was developing a certain “sameness” to it, and I am not always the hugest fan of “sameness” in my own work.

While I certainly like what can be accomplished by doing the same thing over and over again in one color as I did in this project which I dubbed “Vanilla”:

The front of the completed vanilla textured crochet squares afghan
The front of the completed textured crochet squares afghan

and this project which I call “Rhapsody in Gray”:

gray textured crochet square afghan
All joined with the ends woven in and trimmed

The truth is I enjoy the interplay of colors that occurs when there are frequent changes, and I have the yarn scraps to prove it.

Inspired by this Square C-2 from the iconic Better Homes and Gardens Granny Square Sampler:

crochet square c-2 with crochet triangle corners
Crochet Square C-2 ready for the joining round

I decided to employ technique of crocheting triangle corners to create a sort of square within a square. Using a three-round granny square and shorter than average yarn scraps, I got to work:

Squaring off a granny square with crochet triangles
Squaring off a granny square with crochet triangles

The effect was easy to achieve, but there was still a lot of sight seeing to be done, so after making my away across Pittsburgh and seeing all kinds of interesting and wonderful sights — including this awe and color inspiring dinosaur sculpture:

A completely tricked out dinosaur sculpture
A completely tricked out dinosaur sculpture

I stopped in at at the Café Carnegie, and took some time to weave in a few ends:

Weaving in ends at the Café Carnegie
Weaving in ends at the Café Carnegie

I don’t know that I will ever finish everything I set out to crochet, but I will do the best I can, one stitch at a time.