Doing it right

I've had a vague idea for an epic crochet project floating around in my head for about a year now, and last month I finally took the steps toward making it a reality.  I'd been inspired by a Mario-obsession blanket by Gegecrochet (www.gegecrochet.blogspot.com) and wanted to make something similar for my husband for his 30th birthday.

I began searching images of Mario, but was having some difficulty.  I'd grown up playing Super Mario World for the SNES, not for the original Nintendo.  I found, however, that images from the SNES version that I so love are too detailed and don't convert well to a crochet pattern.  It just wasn't working for me.  So, I texted my husband, "What do you think is cooler, Mario or Zelda?"  And he answered back, "Zelda, of course."  It was the answer I'd been hoping for, and the ideas started flowing.

I'd never graphed out my own crochet pattern before, and my experience with Tunisian crochet was pretty limited.  I got the hang of it pretty quickly though, and after hours squinting at little tiny images of Zelda characters (before realizing if I brought those same images up on my iPad, they were much easier to zoom in on) I ended up with a pattern for a 6 foot by 7 foot epic afghan of Zelda-amazingness.

Now, the only problem is that I have no time whatsoever to actually work on this project.  I work 12 hour midnights, and off-time consists mostly of taking care of my kiddos, cleaning, grocery shopping, and doing all that other stuff that piles up while you're at work.  And with all the color changes, I need so many skeins of yarn hooked up to this project at once that I can't bring it anywhere.  I did find these amazing totes from Mary Maxim that help keep my skeins separated, but they are much too large to bring anywhere discretely.

So, I just had 2 weeks of vacation, and I pictured myself crocheting the days away and making huge progress on this project.  We went to Kentucky to visit some family, and I started one of my larger panels on the way down there.  It's the Triforce, and is 120 stitches wide and 120 stitches tall.  With the color changes the most skeins I need at once are 5, so it's one of the more portable panels I have to make.  I worked on it the whole way down, and the whole way back north again - it was a good 10 hours or so of crocheting.  At about row 16 I realized that there was a flaw in my graph, and there was a better way to do it.  But I told myself no, it will be fine, and kept crocheting.  At about row 30 I thought, wow, I'm not sure about this, but again told myself it would be fine and kept on.  When we finally made it back home I was on row 51, and I asked my husband his opinion.  This is what I had to show him.

He didn't even have to say a word - the pity in his eyes spoke volumes enough.  I said, "I knew it.  I'm going to have to rip it apart."  He protested half-heartedly, citing all the work I'd put into it already.  But I could never be happy with this long term.  It would bother me forever if it wasn't done right.  So, an hour later, this is what I had.

It absolutely killed me.  I know I'm not going to get another 10 hours of straight crocheting any time soon.  When I made my original graph for this panel, it looked great.  But each square was 6 stitches.  So what I didn't realize was that, instead of going up 12 and over 6, I could go up 2 and over 1, and end up with a much smoother angle.  Sort of a lowest common denominator thing.  It was March 8th that I tore it all apart, and as of March 14th I was back up to row 43, and very, very happy with the results.

See how much better that is?  I'm so glad that I sucked it up and did it right.  I would never have been happy with the results otherwise.  As of last night I surpassed the rip-out point too - I'm back up to row 54.  And it's easier than ever because I finally found a Bates crochet hook in the size I needed with a cable on the end.  My fingers were really getting sore trying to cram all those stitches onto a regular afghan hook.  I'm really glad that I realized the problem on this panel, too, rather than one of the more complicated ones with many more color changes.  I can adjust the rest of my patterns accordingly and not make the same mistake twice.   I'm still not sure this project will be done in time for my husband's birthday in May, but whenever he does get it, it will be done the very best I can.