Crocheted Pastels Throw

I finished this throw Saturday night, a day earlier than I expected.  I can never judge how much is left to do and how much more yarn I will need on round items since each row gets bigger. Yes, I know as an engineer I should be able to figure it out, circumference = pi * diameter and all that stuff, but it is not as strightforward as a rectangle where one hank got me ~6 inches therefore I need 2 more hanks to get ~18  inches total. Toward the end of this project it took me more than an evening in front of the TV to complete one round. And since this throw had a zig-zag edge predicting both the time to finish and the amount of yarn required became illusive.  So illusive in fact that the Mary Maxim kit that I made it from was short yarn... and yes, I did check my gauge.

I was short just a fraction of a round on the pink (so frustrating) and about half a round of lilac.  The kit gave one hank each white, yellow, peach, pink, lilac, two hanks of blue, and one of green.  The afghan is worked with two strands of yarn, so there are approximately eight rounds for each color: two where it is paired with one strand of its inner diameter neighbor color, two where it is paired with one strand of itself, and two where it is paired with one strand of its outer diameter neighbor color.  This gives the nice blended look (see close-up below) but as it got bigger I ran slighty short of the pink and even more short of the lilac.  The blue was OK since the kit had two hanks.  The outer green was OK, too, since it had no outer neighbor and thus had only six rounds: two where it is paired with one strand of blue, two where it is paired with one strand of itself.  

Fortunately, even though I bought this kit a long time ago, I was able to buy more yarn. The yarn was Bernat Baby Coordinates and has a nice shimmer and softly bumpy, texture to it.  It was long enough ago that the yarn is now packaged in smaller quantity hanks than came with the kit. There was only one review on the Mary Maxim site and I was bemused that the woman said that there was plenty of yarn left over  for other projects. In a weird way that is certainly true for me since a bought another hank for a few yards and I do have extra of the colors I did not run out of.  Maybe I can make another with the colors in reverse order ... ?

This is my first crocheted project and I enjoyed it. Although I have done the random crocheted finish on a knitting project I have always been mainly a knitter not a crocheter. My mom did both. She made beautiful tablecloths with cotton thread and intricate pineapple designs- whole big round tablecloths- not just doilies! My cousin Nina said she liked crocheting better because she only had to worry about one stitch at a time! I agree. But when you make that inevitable mistake there is no way to fix it in crochet other than ripping back to the point of the mistake. Also another perk of crochet is that there are no loose ends to sew in- you just crochet over them as you go!