Cosmic Cal: Part 9 and beyond

I finished Part 9 of the Cosmic Cal designed by Helen Shrimpton

all but the final row of Crab Stitch.

At this point the bedspread has taken 2 and a half Whirls and just over half of a Whirlette. There is only a little of the Jumping Jelly Whirl left as you can see in the photo above.

3mm hook

The width is just over a metre

which would be fine for a single bed, but I wanted it to go on the double in my guest bedroom – (to go with the crazy chandelier) – so it needs to be a bit bigger.

Continuing with my account of how I arranged the colours and made some additions:

Part 9

Rounds 91, 92 and 93 were worked in the Citrus Whirlette and then I continued with the Jumping Jelly to make a round or Helen’s newly invented Slanting Clusters, which she demonstrates in this You Tube tutorial video for Part 9.

Row 95 was worked in the Jumping Jelly and I did not work the last row (Crab stitch) of the Cal.

Beyond Part 9

To expand the design, I added rows from Parts 4 and 5 – the Sunbursts.

This would have been quite simple if I had decided to just repeat these rows, adjusting the stitch count accordingly, but I decided I wanted to see if I could get the Sunbursts to fan out a little more – so here goes!

The tricky bit was how to judge the amount of yarn needed …

There was about half a Rosewater Cocktail Whirl left and a little under half of the Citrus Whirlette. The wonderful members of the Scheepjes Whirl Facebook group have been such an amazing support for this project.

I just asked the question and got immediate answers about which yarn would go with the colours already in the bedspread: Blueberry Scheepjes Whirlette and  Scheepjes Cotton 8 in Light Blue Green, Fuchsia and Sea Green.

The Cotton 8 is a little thicker than the Whirl yarn and pure cotton (the Whirls are a Cotton and Acrylic mix) but they work in well.

To blend the orange at end of the Jumping Jelly with the magenta and turquoise mix of the the next bit of the Rosewater Cocktail, I worked rows as follows (US terms):

A round of half-doubles in Fuschia,

A round of doubles in Rosewater Cocktail,

A round of singles in Sea Green Cotton 8

2 rounds to create the Star Stitch in Rosewater Cocktail

A round of singles in Sea Green

I mainly followed the pattern for Part 4 of the Cosmic Cal, but spaced the starting semicircles of the Sunbursts at 35 stitches apart instead of the 25 sts in the pattern.

To find the right positions for these sunbursts, I found the middle of each side and marked the centre of the Sunbursts with stitch markers.

To get the Sunbursts to fan out more than in the pattern I kept the stitches in between to rows of single crochets (instead of dcs) and added some chain sts between the groups of trebles and treble picots (Round 61 of the pattern)

In the next round instead of ch3 between each group, I did ch5 in the first and last gap and ch 4 in the other gaps

 

The Rosewater Cocktail Whirl came to an end in this Round and I started the Blueberry Whirlette.

For the sunbursts to lie flat I skipped a st before starting the sunburst and at the end, I also increased a stitch either side of the central point.

 

I do make life tricky for myself sometimes.

Two more Rounds to go ……..

Joining in with Frank’s Photo Challenge : Colourful