I like to have hand work to do at night. Since I have finished my baby afghans, I am ready to start another needlework project. I have noticed that a few of you are joining Polly’s Stardust Melodies CAL @ Every Trick on the Hook. I love all of the textures she is introducing, so I will definitely be joining in:)
I have a lot of purple yarn just lying around in my stash that I want to get rid of, so purple it is! I think this afghan is the perfect project for all of these lone skiens of yarn. I may need to add more to these, but I don’t want them to match, so that makes it easy!
The only tricky part of this square is learning the techniques of back loop only stitching BLO, and front loop double crochet FLDC in the previous row.
Here is how to Back loop Stitch:
- A regular stitchgoes under the v of a stitch, but a back loop stitch only uses the top part of the v. I have pointed the arrow to the stitch on the top picture.
- Place your needle in the center of the v and stitch as usual. Easy!
By stitching this way, a line of stitches is left on the front.
Here is the Front Loop Double Crochet stitch:
- Wrap the yarn around your needle and identify the front stitch that you will be going around. The arrow in this picture shows the horizontal bar that was left from last rounds back loop stitch,
- Place your needle under and through this stitch
- Wrap the thread around your needle.
- Work off as a normal double crochet.
Once you get the hang of it, it is so fun to crochet this way. It adds texture and interest to the finished piece. It also holds my interest longer. 
Am I the only one who tends to get the doldrums about midway through a project? This CAL should help solve that problem by making it easy to finish one small afghan square at a time:)
Here is my first small finished afghan –the Bequine square. 
I just love all of the texture and the directional pattern:). Don’t you? It sure would be SWEET to have you join along!
It's a T-Sweets day! 