Potholder Prowess

I've been on a crochet kick for about two weeks now (give or take). I thought I'd try something a little more complicated than what I've been making, so I opted to give the Crochet Flower Hot Pad a go. The pattern itself was simple but interesting enough to keep my attention. Here's the finished item:



I also took a few progress pictures to give an idea of the construction...


This is really the skeleton of the piece. All of the fancy twisting stuff happens later. Most of the crocheting is just around this skeleton, so it's actually very easy.


This is the the result of a 180 degree clockwise turn of each petal. Again, it's very simple but it's what makes the potholder interesting.


Finally I just counted 5 stitches from the tip 3-stitch group on either side and tied it to the next petal over in the same place. This helped a lot for crocheting that last round. The braid coming off of there is all of the ends. I'm sure I could have crocheted it without cutting the yarn at each color change, but I found that the wrong side actually looks nicer, so I'm glad I didn't because I would have been stuck with those yarn carries.