A wonderful site called The Crochet Crowd has been keeping my interest for a while now. The guys that run it are amazing with their beautiful crochet work, and they have such a great sense of humour. They have a lot of great videos for their tutorials and events they attend.
Anyhoo... since January these boys have been running some very interesting CAL challenges. They post a free pattern for everyone to follow and give a month to finish that item and send in the photo of the finished work. The winner is not chosen by popular votes, which I'm rather glad for as far too many folks manage to find a ton of people to come vote for them even if their work isn't that great. To be honest I really didn't see any ugly work being done for these challenges, though there were some really outstanding ones... I'd hate to see someone who worked so hard on something that gorgeous not win simply because they had less friends to help vote.
The way the winner is chosen for these challenges is via a random number generator. This was felt to be fairer than public voting as it simply picks someone at random. I still feel that the site owners should've gone through and picked the really amazing works and chose from those they thought was the best. Ah well, at least this was still somewhat more fair way to choose.
Out of the few challenges I actually managed to finish on time, unfortunately I didn't win any of them. I still enjoyed making the items though and they were items I can use around the house. I missed a couple simply because I'm really not that speedy with my crocheting and the work was a larger project. Two afghans I missed mainly because I opted for a size that would fit my bed (which is Queen size) instead of going for the smaller versions.
The projects I did enter were a Spring Fling Pillow, an Ocean Waves afghan, and a Circular Motifs Wrap. The only reason I managed to get the afghan one done was due to knowing ahead of time which pattern was being used and I was able to start it before the official date. This was allowed so it wasn't cheating. Though to be honest I only just finished it... literally an hour before the official closing time (whew). Here's some shots of my entries:
Spring Fling Pillow: this was a very quick crochet, even for me. Some people did multiple entries, but I opted just for the one. This is now sitting on my sofa and the cats love cuddling next to it when I'm not LOL!
Ocean Waves Afghan: because I'd finished the above pillow in such a short time and the pattern for the next contest was up (this Ocean Waves one), I began this a bit earlier than the official start date. I wasn't the only one and the boys from the Crochet Crowd were quite okay with this. It's no longer draped on my sofa but is now getting used for my bed now that the cooler autumn weather is drawing nearer.
Circular Motifs Wrap: This was originally intended to be a wrap or shawl, but it came out looking more like a table runner... so this is what I'm using it for (though not on the table in the photo LOL).
I'm currently working on the latest contest... the Juicy Fruits Afghan... though the deadline has already passed. I had three months to make this latest one, but I still wasn't able to get any more than halfway through it. I again chose to do a Queen size so it would fit my own bed. When that is done I'll show it off here on my blog.
