Weldon's Fourteenth Series - The Harlequin Ball

For this week's post I've attempted the Harlequin Ball. I thought this would be an easy and quick item to make.

The pattern says you can make it with odds and ends of wool. They suggest Andalusian wool which is close to a sport weight yarn in a variety of colors for the tuft (aka popcorn) stitches and cardinal for the main color. I didn't have odds and ends of that weight so I decided to use worsted weight acrylic scraps. I managed to find a nice assortment of colors and some Red Heart Super Saver in red.

As I read through the pattern I realized the construction was very different than a typical ball but after taking a second look at the illustration it makes sense. The pattern has you make a circle for the top with increases keeping the circle flat until you get 24 stitches in a round. Then cut the yarn and make a second circle the same way. Once the second circle gets to 24 stitches you chain 29 and join to the other circle and start working in rows.

To get the ball shape you slip stitch in the first and last six stitches of each row with the middle stitches being either single crochet or a section of popcorn stitches. For some rows you crochet into the same stitch you previously worked in and in some you use the next stitch. This went pretty well for the first half where I was careful to read the directions for every repeat. Counting the slip stitches was a little harder than I thought. Sometimes I had an extra stitch after a popcorn row and I just skipped a stitch to make up for it.  Somewhere in the second half I ended up with more stitches on one of the circles than the other. I was not going to restart this because the slip stitches were hard to work into and I did not want to redo those. I improvised and ended up with a bit of a swirl in the stitches. 

This is what the finished "ball" looks like. It's about six inches tall in this form.

Football version

Wonky side

I could force it into a ball shape by running a thread from one end to the other and squishing it down but I kind of like the football shape. I squished it down in this photo.

Squished version

Now for the score:
Is the pattern easy to understand? Yes. Even the tuft/popcorn stitches were explained pretty well. 1.0
Does it look like the illustration? If I force it to. It could be my error in counting the slip stitches too. I'm giving it a 0.5
Would someone use this? Yes.  It's not as delicate as the one they would have made but it's a fun toy. 1.0 
Did I enjoy making it? Eh. Not so much. Acrylic yarn in slip stitches is hard on my hands. I didn't hate it but I wouldn't make it again.  0.25

Total is 2.75