Hogwarts Crest

"We must all face the choice between what is right and what is good " ~ Albus Dumbledore

As I mentioned before, I joined the amazing Harry Potter Crochet-along designed by the amazing Alexandra from twoheartscrochet.com. I knew immediately that I had to join this crochet-along. The original crest had a black background, but when I was looking at the graph, I realized that I loved the look of the black border on the outside of the crest. So my only real question was, what color should I do the crest on? I saw some amazing work where people had used alternate colors, such as black but then putting a white border on it, around the outside black border, black, gray and even a purple background. When I saw the gray background I knew that was the perfect fit for me. The next question was, which crest should I do, the detailed one below, or the simple version without the animals...I'm a glutton for punishment, so I went with the detailed version.

Here is a picture of my finished product. I still have to weave the ends in. I am working on that. I will update the picture when I get the ends fixed. 

The picture doesn't do just to the size of this thing. It is HUGE! I did my crest in the double crochet corner to corner stitch. I wanted the crest to be the focal point of the afghan and guess what?!?!?! it truly is. If I had to do it all over again, I would have done the block in the mini corner to corner which uses the half-double crochet or a single crochet from side to side. But I still love how it looks.

Harry Potter Graph Afghan, aka Graphgan

As promised, today is the start of my Harry Potter Afghan. This afghan is comprised of 37 separate blocks. Most of these blocks I have created, but there are a few blocks that were created by someone else that I modified, and then some that were created by another blogger completely. For the blocks that were created by the other blogger, I will link back to her website. I will also give credit where credit is due to the those that inspired my creation.

This project started because another blogger from Twoheartscrochet.com started a Harry Potter Crochet-along. The project is comprised of 13 blocks, 1 large crest, and 12 surrounding blocks. My whole intention was to follow her patterns and recreate her afghan, but I have been surrounded by a lot of creative juices. Many in the crochet-along started creating such amazing work I knew I had to also give it a shot. There were way too many wonderful ideas and not enough space, so I decided to make my afghan unique. Instead of doing 12 individual blocks around the crest, I decided to do only the crest and the four corner blocks in a corner-to-corner stitch in double crochet, and the remaining blocks will be completed in single crochet, so it will take 4 blocks to fill the larger blocks. I am pretty pleased with my progress. I found both the Harry Potter banner and the broom banner on Pinterest, but alas I can no longer locate the broom banner website. As I complete each phase of this project I will attach a PDF link for anyone wanting to use my graphs. I hope you enjoy making this afghan as much as I am enjoying it.

***Update*** So I ran into a problem with some of my graphs. I found that some of the smaller graphs did not look as good as I would have liked when crocheted in the single-crochet stitch like I had planned, so I modified my original layout back to the original layout, the crest in the middle with 12 blocks surrounding it. I don't like it nearly as much as I liked my original idea, but alas, whatcha gonna do about. With my time constraints (the afghan will be donated to the silent auction for my family reunion) I decided 12 additional blocks were a lot easier to accomplish than 37. LOL. I do still plan on making this massive afghan just as it is... well maybe with a few tweaks, but pretty close. Here's the new layout that I am working on. 

*** Note *** I am combining some of the graphs together into a single PDF to get the graphs out quicker. I will eventually update with each graph link. But until then, I hope this helps. 

Block 1 - Crest
Block 2 - 9 3/4 -I tweaked the original block from the twoheartscrochet blog. For the original go to      twoheartscrochet
Block 3 - Lightning Bolt
Block 4 - Potion Bottle
Block 5 - Marvolo Gaunt's Ring
Block 6 - Always
Block 7 - Time Turner
Block 8 - Padfoot
Block 9 - Fawkes the Phoenix
Block 10 - The 7 Horcrux's combined.
Block 11 - Wizard's Chess
Block 12 - Alas, Ear Wax
Block 13 - Wormtail
Block 14 - Snitch
Block 15 - Hedwig
Block 16 - Harry Potter
Block 17 - Dobbie
Block 18 - Crookshanks the Cat
Block 19 - Draco Malfoy
Block 20 - Sorting Hat
Block 21 - Voldemort
Block 22 - Dolores Umbridge
Block 23 - Books
Block 24 - Hermione Granger
Block 25 - Deathly Hallows
Block 26 - Luna Lovegood
Block 27 - Albus Dumbledore
Block 28 - Rubeus Hagrid
Block 29 - Minerva McGonagall
Block 30 - Alastor Moody
Block 31 - Tri-Wizard Cup
Block 32 - Ron Weasly

Banner 1 - Harry Potter
Banner 2 - Broom stick

Alternate Block 1 - Serverus Snape
Alternate Block 2 - Cedric Diggory
Alternate Block 3 - Neville Longbottom

As you can tell I am not going to be releasing the blocks in order, mostly because I am waiting on a yarn order. So, until then, I will be working on the blocks that I can. Until then, "I solemly swear that I am up to no good."

A New Obsession - Creating Graphs

I tend to go through periods in my life where I am obsessed with various things. Right now, my obsession is creating graphs. I love doing it. I became obsessed with creating them because I am in the process of making several afghans to donate to my family reunion auction that will happen this summer, July to be exact. Just before Christmas, I found the blog, Twoheartscrochet.com and learned that they are doing a Harry Potter crochet-along, which means that each week she is releasing a new block and hundreds, maybe even thousands of people are doing the same afghan. She also has a Facebook group that provides support for those doing the crochet-along which I am a part of. The creativity in this group is amazing and has inspired me to use my skills to create some graphs. Along with making graphs for my Harry Potter Afghan, I am also making a few graphs to go with my Starwars afghan. I plan on featuring each block individually for anyone interested in using my graphs. At the moment I have 14 different blocks with more on the way. Stay tuned!