Week 3 – Mushrooms, Leaves and a Few Challenges!
A Confident Start... or So I Thought!
Oooh, it was Mushrooms and Leaves Week! I was so excited and eager to get started. I checked out the patterns and thought, "This will be easy – a few rows, a few leaves and a pumpkin." Well... I couldn't have been more wrong!
I started with the mushrooms and ended up frogging them again and again. First, I somehow managed to start on the wrong side of my work, so after almost completing all four sides, I had to pull the whole thing back out and start over. Then, for some strange reason, I just couldn't get my mushroom stitch count right. I think these mushrooms were starting to get to my head!
I decided to call it a night and have another go the following evening. Thankfully, everything clicked into place and I had no issues at all. I managed to get even more done on Friday and, by Saturday morning, I had finished the rows and was ready to tackle the French knots.
Mastering the French Knots
Just like many others in the CAL Facebook group, I struggled with them at first. I watched the tutorial video and tried to follow along, but I still couldn't quite get the hang of it. To keep moving forward, I improvised by sewing a few stitches in one spot to create the mushroom dots. But I wasn't ready to give up! I kept practising the French knots and, eventually, they started to make sense. Before long, I was racing through the mushrooms.
My daughter absolutely loved the green yarn. She said it really "popped" – like "Pow!" With all the warm browns, reds and oranges blending together, the green stood out beautifully and added a lovely contrast to the blanket.
Leaf Me Alone!
After a little break from making mushroom spots, I decided it was time to tackle the leaves. That's when my next set of problems began! It quickly became clear from the CAL Facebook group that I wasn't the only one having difficulties.
I watched the video tutorial again, hoping it would make more sense. Although my first attempt looked more like a tangled mess than a maple leaf, it did help me understand the pattern better. Armed with a bit more confidence, I went back to the written instructions and started again. Eventually, I completed four maple leaves. They certainly weren't perfect or identical... but then again, what leaves in nature are?
The remaining leaves came together much more easily after that. The maple leaves still required plenty of concentration—I'd look away for a second, come back, and completely lose my place in the pattern—but I got there in the end and finished all eight acorn leaves. However, after I had finished all the leaves, I saw on the CAL facebook group that there were a couple of errors on the original pattern. The colour of the acorn was wrong and the UK/US terms had been switched around on one of the leaves. I decided to leave them as they were, but I may download the updated pattern and redo them and see if it makes a big difference.
Pumpkin Success... Eventually!
The pumpkin was thankfully much more straightforward. I did pause for a moment when I reached the instruction to "miss 2 sts, dc in next, htr in 2nd missed st, tr in 1st missed st." It looked confusing at first, but I trusted the pattern and followed it step by step. I'm so glad I did because the textured effect it created on the pumpkin was beautiful.
Then came the surface crochet... at midnight! My brain clearly wasn't working at full capacity because I just couldn't get my head around how to start it. My hands seemed to be doing their own thing and my brain another! The video helped a little and, somehow, I managed to get the first line started. Once I'd done that, the remaining three lines came together much more easily. Maybe it was just the late hour making everything seem harder than it really was!
Ready for Week 4
This has definitely been the most challenging week so far, but I got there in the end and finished just in time for Week 4.
I'm hoping we'll be moving on to the larger strip sections next and these will be in the round. I'm really looking forward to them... although, knowing how this CAL has gone so far, I wonder if I'll still be saying that at the end of next week!
To purchase your own kit, click this Sirdar Pumkin Spice CAL Kit
