And read all over

I made three squares for Lesa‘s daughter Nesa, who has been put on the liver transplant list.  Nesa requested red, black and white Mickey Mouse colors.  All three of the squares have bullion/roll stitches.  Bullion stitches are crocheted by yarning over multiple times and drawing a loop through all of them.  The trick is getting all the loops evenly wrapped around the center,   

Katie’s Bliss square pattern uses the bent bullion stitch, which consists of a bullion followed by a slip stitch.  Once I finished the flower center, the rest of the pattern went quickly.  I like the center white rounds, which are supposed to look like hearts.  (Mine are a little square-ish.)

This square is called Angels Around the World, with four angels standing on the center circle.  Bonnie Pierce did a wonderful job writing the pattern clearly and concisely, but I really had to pay attention to get every part crocheted correctly!  

I’m glad that I have made a few Daisy Flower Crochet Chairty Squares, because the construction was similar.  The angel skirts and bodies are crocheted as joint rows with the background and then the angel wings and heads are added with separate lengths of yarn.   There are about ten ends to tuck in for one six inch square!

 

The Lacy Bullion Heart square was the easiest square out of the bunch.  The center of my heart has a spiraled look, which doesn’t show in the sample picture.  Next time I will chain-one more loosely; that might fix the swirl look. 

I added the ‘2008’ after sewing the heart to the black square.  Even though I pinned and basted the heart on the background, it wasn’t centered very well, so I added the date to balance the square out.

I had to eliminate one or more rows from each of the squares to get exactly six inches across.  Even with a size E crochet hook, I could never get the correct gauge.  Red Heart Super Saver runs a little thicker than other worsted weight yarn and I’m guessing that was part of the sizing issue.   

Also, I had a few problems photographing these squares.  Black and red colors are really difficult to capture in their true tones.  This was true for the Lacy Bullion Square especially.  To get the colors to photograph better I waited until late in the day and lowered the exposure level.  (On my Canon PowerShot A530, I used program mode and pressed the +/- button to adjust the exposure manually.)

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