Crocheting Along

A few weeks ago I picked up a packet of Lion Brand's "bonbons" -- eight mini skeins of yarn -- in the brights colorway.  This was perfect for me, since I'm not looking to crochet any big projects and I don't want to buy huge skeins of yarn when I only need a little bit.

First up was the brightly colored mandalas from issue 54 of Mollie Makes:

The yarn (and, correspondingly, the hook) was larger than the pattern called for, so let's attribute any wonkiness to that and not my lack of experience.  I have no idea what I'll do with the mandala.

There was plenty of yarn left over, so on to granny squares:

As usual, my persnicketiness required that I balance the colors: eight skeins + four "positions" in each square = eight squares with every color used four times.  I made a ninth with a pretty colorway I hadn't used yet, to end up with a square number of squares (so to speak) (there wasn't enough yarn for 16).  Want to exercise your brain?  Figure out which one is the extra square!

My two favorite:

I was almost out of yarn at this point, but a politely-worded email to the fine folks at Lion Brand about the fact that one of the mini skeins had two large knots in it (hidden on the back of the mandala and one of the squares) resulted in a free replacement package of bonbons.  Yay!  And thank you! As my father would say, el bebé que no llora no mama.

More crocheting to come ....