Cashmere! Crochet! Cushion

This was a pretty big achievement in crochet for me. My first foray into triple trebles (and beyond - up to quintuples I think, though by that point I had a good handle of the logic of it). Actually, 'working behind each petal' was much more of a stumbling block. It took a few trial goes of the first several rounds before I felt I was getting it. And I was so focused on the crochet challenge and happy to get it done in time, that I enormously underestimated the other challenge at hand, that of knitting the cushion cover itself in a few days. With the regrettable result that the very dearly loved person left waiting for a Christmas present was the same one who last Christmas received one sock and the promise of another before it would be cold enough to wear them. Oops.

Minor variations from the pattern: I didn't do the outer (chain) rounds of the flower because I just liked the simpler design. Similarly I liked the idea of doing it all in one colour instead of contrasting flower and background.  The wool is more of that lovely green Patons Romance. I  didn't follow the pattern for the cushion cover, I just (ha!) went for the size of insert I already had, and made it removable, with a button closure. (I think I've figured out the better way to do that since last time. That one was posed fairly nicely for the photo but actually tended to gape too much.)

And just "making it the right size" turned out to be not so easy. A lot of the delay came about because I was overly concerned about making sure the cushion would end up looking well-stuffed (so the flower would pop out nicely) and I overestimated how small the cover should be relative to the filling. I knit the whole thing once, way too small, partly in a pre-Christmas frenzy. Then when I knit it again, still aiming for a 40cm insert, I ended up needing a 35cm one instead. And all was well in the end.