My first *Frida's Flowers CAL* hurdle.

Ooopsie Woops ( translated: Aaaargh! ). This does not happen often. I've hit a hurdle. Usually, where it comes to colour, I have a very clear picture in my head. Round Three of Frida's Flowers calls for nine colours. 9! It all looks perfectly lovely, on the chart, and in the colours chosen by Jane Crowfoot but, hello, I'm using Pastels? So my hurdle is: how can I use five pastel colours and still create a piece that pops? Mmmmm. I've been working on several combinations. My husband loves them all because he loves me! He's absolutely NO HELP at all! Anyhow, while I allow my brain some space to play with colour combinations and come up with a solution, I turn to crochet to help keep the brainstorm flowing. I like the idea that I crochet to sort out a crochet related problem. For me, it works like this.

My project at the moment uses five colours from the Elle Yarns Family Knit DK range:

• Aran, 
• Beige, 
• Skintone ( don't ask ) 
• Snowmoon 
• Lemon Yellow.

Enter Hurdle.

Enter Brainstorm.

Which is to pick up three entirely different colours:

• Citrus
• Watermelon
• Shrimp

And using a lovely, easy flowy stitch, the fabulous "V", begin. anything. simple.
Heather, from Patchwork Heart,  has written a blog post about this stitch. I'm definitely going to use it again. I can see a V-Stitch colour block blanket in my future! :D Naturally, I like to name things. The colourway here reminded me of Fizzers! Yes, the Fizzers Infinity Scarf. I swear my teeth hurt just writing that!

I used the three *fizzy* colours, joined together randomly using this method ( which I LOVE ). It's an incredibly strong join and unobtrusive. Also, no bits to weave in.

Anyhoo, the point of this post is about helping to ensure the flow, well, flows!  The idea is to keep your hand-eye-brain wheels chugging along. Our brains can multi-task easily, so while we're crocheting a simple infinity scarf, in another brain-room, there's a different sort of action taking place. I imagine something along the lines of tiny crochet-wise Oompa-Loompas, all busily sorting out yarn colour combinations. Some are pulling their hair out, some are squabbling, others are thoughtful and patient. But in the end, when my *Fizzers Infinity Scarf*  is done, they will deliver the exact solution to my *Round Three Frida's Flowers CAL*  problem. They always do. All I need to do is keep the cogs oiled with crochet, in this case, and wait.

I hope this works for someone else as well as it has for me! :-)

Happy crochet weekend!
Love, always,