Soccer Ball Progress

I have finished 6 pieces of the soccer ball. 5 hexagons and 1 pentagon. After assembling the blocks into the first cluster it looks like this:


Positioned on the ball, it looks like this:

(6 down, 26 to go!)

As you can see the colours follow through from the adjacent blocks. By the time the ball is completed the swirls will wrap right around the ball. I can't wait to see that..


Just incase it looks very confusing to you, I thought I'll show it to you step by step: This is the pentagon in the centre of the cluster.


Round 1: (very fiddly and frustrating!) I started with 5ch closed into a loop. Each colour starts with 2ch,1sc after which I save it on a paperclip and start with the next colour. keeping all the strings apart at this stage is quite tricky...


Round 2: 1dc into 2ch, 1dc into sc...onto the paperclip and do the same with the next colour...


Round 3: 1dc-1ch-1dc into dc, 1dc into dc...onto the paperclip and do the same with the next colour...


Round 4: 1dc into dc, 1dc-1ch-1dc into ch, 1dc into dc, 1dc into dc...onto blah,blah,blah...


Round 5: 1sc into dc, 1sc into dc, 1slipstich into ch, cast off. Work away the loose ends in the middle, it opens the centre up nicely.

For a hexagon start with 6 different strings and follow the same instructions.
I tapered off and stopped after 5 rounds as that is the size I need for the ball, but if you want to make something else, just carry on with what you were doing in round 4 until you have the desired size and then taper it off.
I would also suggest that you start with 5 (or 6 in the case of the hexagon) different colours. Working with the same colours makes this even more confusing in the beginning.

Now on to the next cluster...