Tearing Myself Away...

I have been obsessively crocheting octagons. I finished the second one this morning and spent most of the day doing another. 

Each one is 11" from side to side. 

I love the seeming randomness of the colours. Most normally wouldn't go together  but the overall effect will be wonderful.

There are a couple of options for borders once the elements are pieced together. More rounds would yield an even wider afghan. Being acrylic, blocking won't be that effective for pulling it wider and longer. However, I am really liking the feel of this acrylic yarn - not 'crunchy' at all.

I'm getting the hang of reading what I've crocheted and correcting any counting errors I may have done. The third octagon has even fewer errors from the first two. I'm also learning to check for mistakes in the round just completed before I cut the yarn. It's easy to miss crocheting through the long chains or not doing the right number of treble crochets in a cluster. I know this because I've had to splice the yarn a couple of times after correcting something.

I've also been trimming the ends as I go. Most of them get worked over a new colour so are well buried and only a small tail needs to be trimmed off.

This project is not difficult. The videos helped a lot, although Janie skipped over some of the rounds she thought were very straight forward that I found not to be the case. However, I persevered and figured out the issues. Accurate stitch count is important. 

Oh, and this is what I'm hoping it will look like when I'm done. I've done the first 3 octagons on the top row.

3 down 13 to go.