My first experience doing motifs with joins in the round was last summer when I made the Dancing Daisy Crochet-A-Long.  When I was at the Pittsburgh Creative Arts Festival I bought a crochet kit from Stunning String Studio.  The kit was the Floating Wrap pattern by Robyn Chachula, one of my favorite teachers at the festival.  It came with three skeins of Luxury in Storm Cloud by Stunning String Studio.  I ended up purchasing an extra skein because the pattern said that three would make a medium and four would be needed for a large.  I didn’t wan to run out of yarn at the end, so I just bought an extra to make sure I had enough.

This was the most challenging pattern I have completed to date.  This was my first time making a full garment out of motifs joined in the round.  Each motif was pretty easy.  I picked up the pattern quickly.  The problem I had for the most part was the joining.  Oh boy, did I mess that up.  A lot.  I frogged this thing so many times it isn’t even funny.  I also learned a valuable lesson.  Do Not Weave in End until you are Done!  I thought I could save myself some time by weaving in the ends as I was blocking each motif.  Nope.

See,  I decided that blocking the whole thing at the end would be difficult.  So I was blocking two – three motifs at a time as I was making the wrap.  Then I decided that it would be a great time saver to weave in the ends after I blocked each motif.  So I’d spend a day making 2 – 3 motifs and blocking them.  The next day I would join them, make 2 – 3 more, block them, and weave in ends.  So efficient!

That worked great, until I started to find my mistakes.  Then I had to find the weaved in ends and pick them out so I could frog the joins.  It was painful.  But I finally made it through and I have to say this was a huge learning experience.  I’m really happy with the end product.

The gaping whole in my motif joins was another mistake that caused me to frog the joins again.

There was a mistake in this motif, but it ended up not mattering because I messed up the joins and had to frog it anyway.

I started to block these before joining them, but in the beginning I didn’t.