I love making this, but I would not recommend a beginner try it. It’s doable, but it would be frustrating. The directions leave some bits to the crocheter to figure out (such as how to place the puffs around the edging between the octagons); it also requires a fair amount of attention and lots of stitch counting. The crocheting itself was pretty straightforward but the assembly is more of a challenge.

I wish, now, that I had done this 6 octagons wide.

I did a small bit of stitching in red on the back of the bottom right octagon do he can easily tell the back from the front.

I’m going to try and get some daylight pictures before my dad takes this home with him. The weather is iffy the next few days, so we’ll see. The picture with the single motif shows the actual color.

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Random … there are 387 puffs in the edging alone (for my 5x7 afghan). 1260 in the 35 motifs. (35 octagons x 36 puffs is - to my shock - 1260. gasp) Grand total of 1647. Yikes. I’m glad I waited until I was finished to do that math!

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Changes: ch-4 instead of ch-5 for the initial ring (I did this for both motifs).

Using a chainless starting dc and trc instead of ch-3/ch-4. Looks much more cohesive.

For the filler square - I used the larger hook for the main motif and switched to the smaller to do the joining. Was way too small done with the smaller hook (as stated in the pattern). The directions for joining it to the octagons was lacking - I wish they were more specific. You have to do the first loop into the first dc, then work across the side into the open loops on the octagons.

One (big) unintentional change was not actually doing the flat braid join. I’m not taking the hook out to pull the loop through to join, so it’s got a different look. I’m not sure where my head was, but by the time I realized what I was doing, I’d already finished two rows (ends woven in and all) and wasn’t about to go back and redo. I actually really like the way it looks, and it’s a little less “lacy” which I think will work well for my dad.

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ERRORS in the pattern:

Octagon motif:
Joining method (on first page) - there are 6 ch-3 loops on each side of round 8, not 5.

Round (first motif only): it says 95 times, that should read 47 times.

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I ended up redoing the first motif 3 times. Messed up the first time, then realized I’d used the smaller hook instead of the bigger one to make the octagon, so had to tear it out and do it again.

Super easy pattern to memorize. Definitely requires very careful counting - it’s okay for watching tv but only if you’re prepared to rip back if you get distracted. :P