My 10 year old girl is soon to be 11 and she made a birthday wish list. It was an achievable and good list. Amongst the art supplies, how-to draw Manga and the next book in the Angie Sage Septimus Heap series included a funny request for a Parrot (alive) and Piranha (alive), but at the very bottom of the list was a ‘spotty dotty scarf’. That I can do I thought. So I got my crochet hook out, all my colourful yarn and got to making crochet circles. After about 15 colourful circles I started to wonder how I would put them together. I had an idea in my head but wasn’t sure if it would work out. So after some looking around the internet and on Ravelry I came upon some freestyling crochet designs and so thats what I did. I winged it.

Here is what I did:

Step 1. Make about 20 circles in different coloured yarn (medium weight yarn – medium size hook).
- chain 6
- join chain with a slip stitch to make a loop
- Treble crochet (uk) / double crochet (US) (which I will now call Tr) 12 stitches into the loop
- join with a slip stitch
- chain 3 then Tr into the next stitch then 2 Tr into each stitch after that – total of 24 stitches
- join with a slip stitch into the top of the chain. Tie off – leave a long tail.

Here is a good visual tutorial for making crochet circles

I used alpaca and wool from Bendigo woollen mills.

Step 2. Take 8 of your circles and add a row of white around.
- Tie in your white thread to the tail and chain 3.
- Make 2 Tr into the next stitch, 1 Tr into the 3rd stitch, 2 Tr into the 4th stitch, and so on all the way around.
- join with a slip stitch into the first chain. Tie off, leave a long tail.

Step 3. Lay out your circles in a long line:
- Large circle, small circle, large circle, 2 small circles, large circle etc until you are happy with the design.
- then join the circles to each other using the long tails you left and slip stitch together (about 4-5 slip stitches) and tie off.

Step 4. Crochet around the outside:
- Choose a different colour and crochet Dc [= Double (UK) which is the same as Single crochet (US)] all the way around. When you come to the bits where you have a smaller circle and it dips in, then you will need to stitch in Tr, then go back to Dc again.
- Go around doing this until you are happy with how it is shaping up.
- Block it, press it gently with a warm steam iron and you are done!

Abbreviations
Dc = Double (UK) which is the same as Single crochet (US)
Tr = Treble (UK) which is the same as Double (US)