Comfortghan Squares

I decided to whip up a couple of squares for a comfortghan for a lady on the 'ville whose mother has been diagnosed with cancer.

I was trying to make the Circle of Hope square, but wasn't having much luck. It didn't matter how many times I frogged it and started over, it just never looked right. I don't know if there's an error in the pattern somewhere, if I kept making the same mistake over and over, or if I was just having a really long blond moment. *lol* Whatever it was, I just could NOT get it, no matter what I did.

So I had the wonderful idea of frogging back to a certain point and making it up on my own as I went. That worked! And I liked the "Circle of Hope" idea so much that I ditched the idea I'd had for the second square and just made another one in another color.

I've written up the instructions for what I did in case somebody would like to copy my idea. I really just followed the original pattern for the first few rounds, but rather than send somebody flipping through 2 different patterns back and forth, I wrote it all down. I have to give credit where credit is due, however, and reiterate that the first few rounds are NOT my creation. It's only from Round 4-on that is MY creation. It's not exactly a difficult pattern, but ya never know when some crochet newbie might stumble along on my blog, see this and think "I wanna do that!" In that case, a pattern would be a good thing. :)

Circle of Hope
Suzanne Barrow’s Version
February 2007

Largely based on Melissa R. Green’s Circle of Hope
http://www.geocities.com/alyssa5000/circle.html

Materials:
Size H hook
About ½ oz. yarn

Makes a 7 inch square

Ch 4, join with a sl st to form a ring

Rnd 1: ch 3, 11 dc in ring, join
Rnd 2: ch 3, dc in same sp, 2 dc in next st and in each st around, join
Rnd 3: ch 1, sc in same sp, [ch 3, skip next st, sc in next st], repeat from [ to ] around, join.
Rnd 4: sl st into ch-3 sp, ch 3, 2 dc in ch-3 sp, [3 dc in next ch-3 sp, ch 2, 3 dc in same ch-3 sp, 3 dc in next 2 ch-3 sp], repeat from [ to ] around, join.
Rnd 5: sl st in first 2 dc and in the sp between 2 dc clusters. Ch 3, 2 dc in between the two clusters, [3 dc – ch 2 – 3 dc in next sp, 3 dc in next sp], repeat from [ to ] around
Rnd 6 – 8: repeat pattern from Rnd 5, putting 3 dc – ch 2 – 3 dc in every corner.
Rnd 9: sc in each st around, putting 3 dc in each ch-2 sp in the corners.

Fasten off, weave in ends.

That's it. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy, as they say out here. Once I decided to do it MY way, these two squares took me less than 2 hours to complete, including weaving in ends and everything. Not bad for a night's work. I just hope the recipient likes them as much as I do!