I was looking around on Pinterest recently and saw a beautiful crocheted afghan that looked like 3D blocks.  The blocks were made out of crocheted diamond shapes.  I didn’t want to make a whole afghan, but thought it might make an interesting scarf for my husband, who is a middle school teacher.  I could even make it in his school’s colors!

I found a great tutorial on how to crochet diamond shapes by Girly Bunches on YouTube.  I pulled out some worsted weight yarn and my H-size crochet hook and started making diamonds.

After I made a few, I tried putting them together to see how they’d look.  I made half-diamonds (triangles) in black to fit in the spaces in between:

I was encouraged by what I saw, and kept crocheting diamonds in blue, white and gray.  Those are the school colors, and I think the white and gray create a wonderful shaded, 3D look.

I had to see what it looked like with the diamonds and triangles sewn together, so I sewed the beginning of the scarf:

Grabbing my crochet hook I got back to work, crocheting more diamonds and triangles.  When I had enough, I switched over to my tapestry needle, and continued building the blocks of the scarf.  One of the things I had to keep in mind is that I wanted the blocks to appear upright on both ends, so at the middle of it, I sewed two blue diamonds in a row, then pieced together the blocks in the opposite direction:

At the end of day 1 of crocheting, I was a little aggravated that I wasn’t anywhere near done yet.  I reluctantly set down my crochet needle and arranged everything for day 2:

The next day, I resumed sewing the diamonds and triangles together, then created a finished edge all the way around with single crochet in black yarn.  Next came the most detested (for me anyway) part of crocheting, weaving in the ends of yarn:

I pulled out a tapestry needle and listed to “Friends” reruns on TV while I wove in yarn ends and snipped.  Thread the needle, weave and snip, thread-weave-snip.  I think I listened to 3 episodes before I was finally done:

How does it look?  You can see, below.  I think it’s OK, but not quite how I pictured it.  One reason is that the black yarn is a slightly heavier weight than the others, and the diamonds look a bit like black bow ties.  I knew I should’ve waited and gotten the correct weight yarn, but shame on me, I was too eager to make it.  And I should probably have used a smaller hook.  Oh well.  Live and learn (I hope!).

How does my hubby like his new scarf?  Of course the dear man says he loves it, and insists he can’t wait to wear it to school tomorrow.