Everything about this pattern, before you pay for it
Most pattern listings tell you after. Here is the whole spec.
| What it is | Two written crochet patterns, each a PDF: the coaster, and a little flower pot to gather it into. The files are titled The Hydrangea Coaster and The Little Flower Pot. |
| What you make | A round openwork coaster: a white centre with twelve straight lines of little windows running out from the middle, a green edge of fans and pointed leaves, and a small hydrangea flower on every fan, in two colours taken in turn. Gather it up by the edge and stand it in the flower pot, and the twelve flowers close together into one round head, the way a hydrangea’s small flowers do. |
| Finished size | About 17 cm (6¾ in) across, flowers included. The pot is about 6.5 cm (2½ in) across and 5.5 cm (2¼ in) tall. |
| How long it takes | About 2½ hours for the coaster. About 1 more for the pot. |
| Hook | 3.0 mm for both, with 5-ply milk cotton — the pairing both patterns recommend, and what brings the coaster out at about 17 cm. A thinner yarn on a smaller hook makes a smaller coaster; the counts never change. |
| Yarn | 5-ply milk cotton, about a US DK weight, in four colours for the coaster: white for the centre, green for the leaves, and two colours for the flowers, six flowers of each. The pot is one more colour of the same yarn; a strong colour shows its ribs best. |
| Yarn needed | About 12 g (25 yd) of white, 12 g (25 yd) of green, and 16 g (35 yd) of each flower colour — about 56 g (120 yd) in all for the coaster. The pot takes about 18 g (40 yd). |
| Skill level | Advanced beginner, for both, which is what each pattern says. The coaster: joined rounds of double crochet with chain spaces, a two-round leaf edge, and treble crochet petals worked onto the leaves. The pot: post-stitch ribbing, invisible decreases and a reverse single crochet rim. |
| Techniques used | Magic ring · joined rounds, closing each one with a slip stitch · chain, slip stitch, single crochet, double crochet and treble crochet · the double crochet increase · skipping a chain space so the spaces line up round after round · working a group of stitches into a chain loop · a pointed leaf made from a chain and a slip stitch · joining new yarn onto a finished edge and working a flower onto it · crocheting over your tails, and weaving in ends. The pot adds: working into the back loops only · front and back post double crochet · the single crochet increase · the invisible decrease · reverse single crochet · an invisible finish |
| Worked in | Both in joined rounds. In the coaster, the ch 3 that starts round 1 and the ch 2 that starts every round after it never count as stitches; each round closes into its first real double crochet. |
| The centre | Five rounds of white double crochet — 12, 24, 36, 48, 60 — each round adding one stitch to each of its twelve groups. Every group ends with a chain 1, and each round steps over the chain 1 below it, so the windows stack into twelve straight lines. |
| Straight or spiral | The lines run straight because the increase moves: to the middle of the group on round 4, to the end on rounds 3 and 5. For windows that spiral out instead, the pattern gives the one line to change on round 4. The count is the same either way. |
| The leaves | Two green rounds, worked straight onto the centre. The first throws 24 chain-5 loops, one on every third stitch of round 5 — and here the chain-1 windows count as stitches. The second turns the loops, in turn, into a fan and a pointed leaf: twelve of each. |
| The flowers | Twelve, one on each fan, worked straight into it: a petal of four treble crochets into each of the fan’s five spaces. At the end the starting tail is drawn through to pull the flower closed, then knotted to the other tail. |
| The flower pot | A flat round base of five rounds, turned up with one round in the back loops, three rounds of front and back post ribbing, then drawn in and finished with a corded rim — one piece, one colour. Gather the coaster up and stand it in the pot, and the twelve flowers fill the top. |
| Sewing and glue | None, in either pattern. The leaves are worked onto the centre, every flower onto its fan, and the pot is one piece. The needle is for weaving in ends — in the coaster, the centre’s and leaves’ tails, once, before the flowers go on. |
| Where it goes wrong | The coaster’s pattern has a short section on the four slips it invites — a loop too small to draw the yarn through, working between two stitches instead of into one, a missed chain 1 that closes a line of windows, and first rounds that won’t sit even — and what to do about each. |
| A knot in the yarn | The coaster’s pattern shows what to do when you meet one, or a ball runs out part way round: where to cut, how to rejoin so the stitch keeps its height, and how far to work over the tails — seven or eight stitches, not two or three. |
| Count checkpoints | Three in the coaster: 24 double crochets in twelve pairs at the end of round 2; 60 in twelve groups of five at the end of round 5; and 24 chain loops at the end of the first leaf round. Three in the pot: 16 at the end of round 2, 40 at the end of round 5, and 32 at the end of round 10. |
| Also needed | Two stitch markers, a yarn needle and scissors. The pot needs nothing more. |
| Pages | 17 for the coaster, 15 for the pot |
| Printing | The instructions are real text, not pictures of text — so you can search them, copy them, enlarge them, or have them read aloud. |
| Terminology | US crochet terms, in both |
| Language | English |
| Left-handed | Written for you too. Work it exactly as written and your coaster comes out a mirror image of the photos. The lines of windows run straight out from the centre either way. In the pot, the reverse single crochet rim travels from right to left for you. |
| Delivery | Both download links on the confirmation page and in your email, straight away. |
Real crochet, captured while it was being made
You have learned to zoom in on a listing photo looking for stitches that don’t join up. You should — the shops selling patterns behind pictures that were never crocheted are real, and there are a lot of them.
So here is the unglamorous version: the white centre at the end of its fifth round, the lines of windows already showing, with the hook still in it; green chain loops going round its edge; and a yellow flower on the green edge. Every one of these was captured while the piece was actually being made.
The flower is the one to look at. It has no base of its own: its five petals are worked straight into the five spaces of the fan beneath it, so it grows out of the edge rather than sitting on top of it.
Nothing on this page is an AI-generated coaster.
Counted twice
My grandmother taught me on her porch, and she said the same thing every time I tangled the yarn: slow down, count twice, rip it out if it’s wrong — there’s no shame in starting over.
So every pattern in this shop gets counted twice. Once when it’s written. Then again, before it goes on sale: every round is re-added, stitch by stitch, and checked against the round before it.
That’s the whole thing. It’s not clever. It is just the step almost nobody takes, because until a pattern is written down properly you can’t take it — and because nobody was ever asked to show their working.
I’m asking to show mine.
The worst thing a pattern does is not be difficult. It is to be wrong early, so that you find out rounds later and spend the next twenty minutes wondering whether it was you.
On this coaster, that place is the first round of leaves, and it is there because of the three rounds before it. Rounds 3, 4 and 5 each step over the chain-1 window below — never into it — and their counts leave the windows out. By the time you reach the leaves, your hand has learned that a window is nothing. The first leaf round is the one where it counts: a loop on every third stitch of round 5, and a window is one of the three. Everything after it comes off that count — twelve fans, twelve pointed leaves, twelve flowers — so that round gets its own checkpoint, and the checkpoint says in so many words that a chain-1 space counts as a stitch.
Counted twice means you can tell. No more counting the same round for the third time, writing it out on paper to make it add up, and still not knowing whether it’s you or the pattern. The count in the pattern is right. If yours doesn’t match it, the slip is in the round you just made — undo that one round and carry on.
You probably have one project in a bag somewhere, stopped at a round you can still name. Often it stopped on a count that wouldn’t come out. Every count in this one comes out, which leaves you the part you came for: finishing it, and gathering it up into a hydrangea for someone.
Here is a real page of it
A pattern that was never crocheted can show you a photograph. It cannot show you a page.
That box is the one place this coaster is easiest to get wrong. It comes after three rounds of stepping over the windows, and it is the first round where a window counts as a stitch. So the box gives you the number you should have — 24 loops — and says exactly where they sit: one on every third stitch of round 5, the windows counted. This is page 13 of the coaster’s 17, and it is the same page you will be reading with a hook in your hand.
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