Space-Themed Squares
Today we will have a look at the last batch of squares, then back to the rest of the afghan projects and my whole book writing experience. As with the Learning Squares and the Garden Squares, this group of squares was put in order of easiest to most difficult (starting with the Moon). I cannot believe I'm 2/3 of the way through my Month of Blogging, and haven't yet run out of things to say (although I may be starting to ramble)...
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| Square #22 Sun |
Every square in this book was made at least 2, if not 3 or 4 times before finalizing the pattern for the book sample. This Sun Square was one of the most difficult to design. I looked at various clipart images of suns, tried making one with more curved points going in different directions. After many times of working, ripping, reworking, and starting over, I finally settled on this version. The straight, symmetrical points of this Sun matched the other simple shapes for
Grampa Kit's Garden Afghan.
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| Square #23 Moon |
The original
Space Afghan we made for Tyler included a Star on the square with the Moon. After making the Sun Square, I just had to make one with just a Moon, because I already had in mind the layout for the
Shines So Bright Afghan.
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| Square #24 Ringed Planet |
Another design inspired by my son's drawings, and a great chance to practice the curves and
sharper angles possible when you add increases and
decreases, and
late color changes to your half double crochet colorwork.
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| Square #25 Rocket |
My son's original Rocket picture was red, so I used some other resources for the final shape. But he was very clear that the door should be black. At the time I was making these blocks, Berrocco was out of their Comfort in Black. I searched all the local yarn shops for just one skein for the little details on this and the Robot square. I finally bought a skein of the Black Comfort in Bulky weight, and manually removed 4 plies of the yarn for these squares.
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| Square #26 UFO |
There are a lot of color changes in this one with all those lights around the bottom. The UFO is one block where I did carry the yarn occasionally. I used a separate piece of yarn for each of the red sections, but carried the green under and over the top of the red stitches (avoiding many of the extra ends you would otherwise have to weave in).
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| Square #27 Alien |
As I was designing these squares, I tried to finish one new square each night after my kids went to sleep. The morning after I made the original alien, my son's first comment when he saw the finished square was, "Good, the teeth are 2 different sizes, and the horns come down on the side". These were apparently very important elements to his design.
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| Square #28 Robot |
Finally the Robot Square. You can see all of my son's original drawings of the Robot
here if you missed my earlier post about inspiration. You may note that the square pictured above is missing some of the embroidered details that you will see on the Robot in
Tyler's Space Adventure. I realized after I shipped off all of the squares that in my haste, I had missed the embroidered mouth and lines around his control panel (important details from the original sketch). This way you can see what he looks like with and without the extra details (if you want to skip the embroidery), but there is a closeup of the Robot with all these details found with the afghan pattern in the book.
Oh my gosh, I might like these even better than the other ones. You're so wonderfully creative!
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