WIP Wednesday - CAL

Today, I'm just showing the latest square of the Bernat Mystery Crochet-a-long. I'm not showing the sweater for my husband because I haven't been working on it much, and I'm not showing the Perry hat because.....it's finished! So you'll see that Friday! Yay!

Also check out: The Crochet Way

WIP Wednesday - Perry the Platypus Hat and Bernat Mystery CAL

When I make hats for my kids, sometimes their friends like to put in an "order" for a hat for themselves. If I can use yarn from my stash, and I have the time, I'm happy to make hats for their friends. Often, they will specify color preferences. This time, one of my daughter's friends wanted a hat that was the same color as Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb. No problem! I did happen to have that color (or very close to that color) in my stash. Next, he wanted to have Perry's eyes on the hat. Ugh. Okay...well, I have black and white, so...but how? Intarsia? 3 strand Fair Isle? 3 color double knit? Then, before I got started, he wanted to have a hat with Perry's bill for the brim. I looked up photos for examples and didn't like what I saw (plus, they were usually in crochet, not knit), so I decided to just start low on the hat with the bill and work up from there. First, I had to make a pattern for Perry, so after downloading some knitting graph paper, I worked on that for about 20 minutes, then I got to work.

So far, I have started this and unraveled it completely at least four times. The farthest I have gotten was just past the halfway point of the bill. I have tried Fair Isle, but I was having a hard time keeping the strands loose enough. I tried double knit, but really, the yarn is way too thick once I get to more than 2 colors. I've tried different methods of wrapping and stranding. Next, I will be attempting Intarsia, even though in many places, there is only a one stitch color change. Ugh. Any suggestions?

I am also doing the Bernat Mystery CAL. Here is my progress so far:

I'm using Waverly for Bernat yarn. My main color is Celadon in the Past Perfect line, color A is Antique in the Town & Country line, color B is Stone Brown in the Town and Country line, color C is Birch White in the Simplicity line and Color D is Incense in the Beautiful Things line.

I am still working on the sweater for my husband. It isn't much further along than it was last week since I kind of got distracted by these new projects.

I'm also linking to:  The Crochet Way, Ambassador Crochet, and Yarn Along

Crocheting a Lacy Sweater

So the theme for August is "Fiction" yet, more often than not, I'm writing non-fiction posts. Glad it's optional!

In addition to reading Mockingjay, I'm also working on a crochet-a-long sweater with a pattern from Interweave Crochet.

If you follow the link, you will see photos of how the finished product should look. I am way behind on my sweater. I'm making it for my daughter. She preferred a different color. I'm using Naturally Caron.com SPA, which is a bamboo blend. The color is called "Greensleeves."

Here are some photos of my WIP*
*Work In Progress

The flash kind of washes out the color

I put a standard sized ball point pen here as a size comparison.

This is supposed to be the "wrong" side, but I think I prefer it to the "right" side shown below

The "right" side