Lily's Joyful Hope WildcatGhan

 I took some days off from the art challenge to focus on a past project that I've finally finished up today. Almost exactly two years from when I started it. It's kind of a silly project, but I'm proud of how it turned out.

I started with a pattern called Bearghan by Pat Liles which was tested and typed by Chris Simon. I can't seem to find it on the internet anymore, otherwise I would link to it. The pattern is a kind of "choose your own adventure" blanket, it only provides the face square and the three triangles and some guidance on what size squares to make for the body of the bear. My first plan was to make it grey and purple with more of a cat face. I figured K-State colors and symbols would be appropriate for any baby born in Manhattan, KS.

I made the face and the three triangles right away but got hung up on how to stuff the muzzle without the stuffing sticking out. About a year ago now, when I was working through all my past projects and just doing the next part of each one, I fixed the muzzle problem and un-made the middle square because the tension was not working out.

The central square is called Joyful Hope and was designed by Aurora Suominen, Amy Carlson and Kathy Joelsen. This is kind of how I turn my well wishes for the intended recipient into yarn. Does this make sense outside my head? At some point in this pandemic, I had decided that when I got to this project, instead of doing just the next part, I would finish it. And then I realized that I had made all my plans not knowing very much about the baby, but because it took me so long, I knew her name was Lily. So I changed the color scheme and swapped out some of the squares I had started with. 

This isn't the order I crocheted them in, but this square was part of the original plan and is called Flower and Trebles by someone who goes by champygirl on the internet. The "trebles" part refers to the triple crochet stitches used to make some of the texture. I had to repeat the treble border to make this square the right size. Back to that line of thought about turning well wishes into yarn....you could say this square represents triple the Joyful Hope.

Also part of the original plan was this Puff Wheat Fields by Margaret MacInnis. Lily's older brother was born in not-Kansas, so I wanted to double down on the Kansas-ness of this project. I had also been looking for squares with a lot of texture and this one delivers big time. It was the first square I made under the new "I can use more than two colors for this" idea, so I grabbed the yarn that looked the most wheat-color to me and gave myself a huge challenge in terms of balancing the colors.

This square started out as Tip Toe Through the Tulips by Samantha of Silverdragon Crafts & Critters. This wasn't one of the original squares that I planned. I picked it because my new plan included making as many different lily flowers as I could find and I thought I could replace the tulip with one of the lilies. Which I did using a Water Lily pattern by Esther from Make My Day Creative. I split the yarn in half to make it thinner so that the water lily wouldn't be enormous. I think this square should be called Tip Toe Through the Water Lilies which is kind of like hoping that Lily gets to spend plenty of time getting her feet wet in the creek....which most people realize is one of my favorite pastimes.

I got hung up on this last square for a while because when I picked it, I meant to put the water lily on top of it like it was a flower shaped lily pad, but I had changed it and messed myself up. It was also my last chance to balance the various colors but I hadn't made the rest of the lilies yet so I didn't know if it was going to work. In any case, it's called Always in Bloom designed by Aurora Suominen and Jill Craft.

The big fun part of reworking my original plan was making as many lilies as I could find patterns for. This Lily of the Valley pattern by Camilia was quick and easy, but I wish I had taken the time to split the yarn and make them more delicate.

When I think of lilies, I first think of the kind of violently orange daylilies that aren't technically lilies at all. I had some in my yard in Maryland. And the second lily I think of are some also orange stargazer lilies I had in Maryland. I didn't find a stargazer lily pattern, so I took some huge liberties with another pattern which I will link below.

And last, but certainly not least, the delicate pink surprise lily. This is Tamara Kelly's Easter Lily but with extra stamens. It is the same pattern I heavily modified to make the stargazer lily. With all the lilies in place, I finished up the border and this two year work in progress is complete.