As I have mentioned in previous posts, Toby is my mother’s dog, and my mother is the center of his universe.

Seven years ago when Toby first came into my mother’s life, he greeted me with snarls and growls. In the intervening years I have learned to cook some of his favorite foods, and he has learned to not growl at the sight of me.

So today when Toby and I again found ourselves seated in my car while we waited for my mother, he was companionable enough, staying on his side of the car while I stayed on mine and worked on my crochet.

Because the groovyghan has gotten so large, and because the car is a confined space, I brought along a traveling stash of Red Heart Super Saver yarn, my collection of Etimo hook, and my copy of Jean Leinhauser’s 101 Crochet Squares so that I could make a concerted effort to get caught up on the crochet-along I am participating in.

I decided to first tackle one of the squares about which I had less enthusiasm: square 8.

The first four rounds of the square are made up of fairly dense single crochet stitches, while the fifth and sixth rounds are a mixture of double crochet and chains. The seventh round makes use of a large number of post stitches which add texture on top of the more open fifth and sixth rounds, the eight round is more double crochet stitches, while the ninth round returns to where the square began, with single crochet stitches.

While it is an interesting square, I was not entirely enamored of the look, so I turned the square 45º to see if I would find that more satisfactory:

While I am not convinced that the varying stitch densities work in this design, I will probably try another version that has a center made of half double or double crochet stitches to see if that creates a more unified look.

The next square that caught my fancy was square 99. Using my 5.0mm hook and with Red Heart Super Saver coffee for the nose, and Red Heart Classic medium brown for the rest of the bear’s face, I made the center of the motif:

I then squared it off with Red Heart Super Saver delft and an accent of the Red Heart Super Saver coffee that was used for the nose:

I loved this square and found it very charming, but I think my choice of the medium brown was too dark and made it hard to read the bear’s expression. I also thought that an afghan composed entirely of bear faces would be too much, so I then got to work designing a companion square that could be used to make the bear squares “pop” a bit more:

Here’s how I picture the two squares being used together:

I have to say, the past two days with Toby proved to be fairly productive given the number of errands that went with them, and while he will not be supervising my crochet endeavors tomorrow, I hope to make use of the good crochet mojo he seems to have created for me.