The internet is a wonderful place to find ideas and patterns. So many generous people put patterns out there at no charge. I was looking for a little spring flower pattern and found this one for african violets. So cute.  What I neglected to do, was read the very important line at the beginning of the post that mentioned the pattern was in UK terms, but a US version was provided at the end of the post.

For laughs sake, here are the different versions I did during my learning curve.

Violets

Upper left: Stitched the flower using the UK terms but thinking they were US terms.  Looks more like a wagon wheel than a flower.

Upper right: Realizing my mistake, stitched the pattern using the UK terms and trying to go from memory on what they translated to in US terms. (I was a bit off in the memory department.) More flower shaped, but still not the cute tight petals from the photos on the blog.

Lower left: Having taken a short break to consult with Google, stitched the pattern with the actual US versions of the stitches. Success! Although I wanted denser flower petals.

Lower right: Stitched the pattern in US version of the stitches, switched to a worsted-weight yarn.  Now this looks like an african violet, albeit a blue one since that was the yarn I had close by.

I love the way the original pattern creator crochets these to look like an actual plant in a pot. She even crocheted the dirt!

So my lesson for the day is to read all the instructions instead of just jumping into a pattern. And to remember that Google has not created a “translate this page” for crochet language yet.

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