It’s that time of year again, time to crochet along together! I present to you my HAPPY CAL

I wanted to make an interactive pattern that was still beginner friendly. The base is just a very simple triangle design, seen here in my original HAPPY blanket. I feel that it looks like lines of happy festive buntings when done in this colourful way. So I couldn’t resist adding a full HAPPY polka dot border on it too. Nothing happier and more festive than polka dots and buntings!

For those who like adventurous crochet projects, you can then keep going and combine colors and triangles to make all kinds of designs on your own! I for one am nowhere near finished playing with all the possibilities here, and I’ve already made 7 HAPPY projects.

The basic design is just the two patterns of triangles, tilted either to the left or right and you can then combine them as you please, I obviously made my first HAPPY blanket incorporating both designs mixed randomly.

You can either just work this with two colors like traditional mosaic crochet or mix it up and either switch one or both colors once you start with the next row of triangles.

I include all the HAPPY versions I’ve made in the pattern, both the original HAPPY projects as well as the spin off Happy Go Lucky versions. But like I said, there are endless possibilities here! So, I invite you to make your own unique Happy piece and see how much fun it is to play with once you start combining colors and different arrangements of the triangles.

This pattern comes with both charts and written instructions for the two original HAPPY patterns, as to keep it truly beginner friendly. The Happy Go Lucky versions are included as chart only, but no worries, I‘ll teach you how to read those in one of the videos.

Be sure to check out my HAPPY CAL video tutorials too, I’ve made 7 and they are all available for free on my YouTube channel. Here’s the first one:
https://youtu.be/ofbSE-TAb_s?si=qd-E64Qkmsbppz-z

Following are the stithces we use in this pattern.

Abbreviations (US terms):
ST = stitch/stitches
SS = slip stitch
CH = chain stitch
SC = single crochet
DC = double crochet
DC2tog = 2 double crochet stitches worked together

Colors
You will need at least two colors and I recommend using contrasting colors. You can either just work this with two colors like traditional mosaic crochet or mix it up and either switch one or both colors once you start with the next row of triangles.

This pattern comes with user-friendly charts. If lefthanded, you can follow the chart from left to right no problem, it´ll look the same.

Mosaic Crochet Technique
This pattern is apt for beginners. If this is your first mosaic project, I suggest you check out my Beginners Guide to Mosaic Crochet video tutorials over on YouTube before you start.

https://youtu.be/HTigdTvdTLQ?si=TS3utOQt6X5lkfBf

Yarn & hook:
You can use any yarn you like for this pattern and a hook that suits your yarn. This is actually the PERFECT project to use scraps and stash, so I highly encourage you to check out what you have in your stash and see if you can do some stash busting. I’m making my big Happy Go Lucky blanket with my Aran stash and using the double color fade technique to arrange my colors there, more on that later.

Sizes:

Happy is an interactive pattern with a 7 ST and 8 row repeat, so you can use this pattern to make various project in any size you like.

To decide on how many repeats, you need for you project, the best way is to start by making a small swatch of the pattern, 1 repeat is enough, using the yarn you have chosen. Then you can measure how wide and long your one repeat is and take it from there, adjusting this to the size you want your project to be.

You can work the HAPPY pattern either flat or in the round. Following are the yarn stats for the original HAPPY baby blanket. lots of more yarn stats for HAPPY projects included once you purchase the patter.

I made the original Happy blanket worked flat, using the color box of Terrazzo from Scheepjes, that’s DK weight (50 g skeins = 175m). I used a 4 mm hook for the body and a 3.5 mm hook for the border.

I used one whole box of the mini skeins (excluding a few skeins) for the body of the blanket and 7 full sized 50 skeins in Terrazzo for the border.

4 x color 734 Opale for main color
1 x color 755 Ciano
1 x 717 espresso
1 x color 702 Limone
The last three colors there are the pattern color for the polka dots.

The blanket measures approx. 70 x 95 cm before the border. Full polka dot border is 5 cm wide, so final measurements in the original Terrazzo yarn are 80 x 105 cm.
That’s 26,5” x 37,5” before border, 31,5” x 41,5” including full border for those of you on the other side of the metric system!

Gauge: Using Terrazzo and a 4 mm hook
20 stitches x 20 rows = 10 cm
20 stitches x 20 rows = 4”

That means that with this gauge you get 3 pattern repeats on the width and 2,5 pattern repeats on the length.

For my blanket I did 19 repeats on the width and 24 repeats long.
Each row of 19 repeats took 10 g of each color. So, if you want to do this same size and in the Terrazzo yarn but with only 2 colors, you would need

5 x 50 g Terrazzo skeins of color A
5 x 50 g Terrazzo skeins of color B

let the fun begin!