Simply Curious

I haven't done a lot of crochet this past year, and it's all the fault of an afghan.

I get much colder at night than B., so I have a throw for my side of the bed.  It's a basic no-sew, fringed and tied end fleece blanket that I've had for ages.  It went much better in my previous bedroom with its rustic style.  It looks downright silly on a Chippendale four-poster.

My book doesn't actually look like this.

So I thought I'd crochet a nicer looking afghan, about the same size.  I eventually came across a Leisure Arts book on Aran afghans and bought it, about the time we moved to Boulder.  Then I found some sage green yarn at Walmart, and bought a few skeins of that.

I particularly liked this book for the way it gave instructions.  It would specifically label sections, i.e. (cable row) so you could conceivably combine different stitches and make up your own pattern.

I went with the Basketweave afghan, although I initially bought it for the Sampler afghan.  Sewing together sections of crocheted yarn is annoying, so I moved on.

I'm terrible when it comes to reading crochet instructions all the way through.   I figure if I don't know a stitch, it will take me five minutes to look it up and figure out how to do it.

Really, I should have stopped here.

What I should have been paying attention to is what the stitches were.  It took me a while to realize that the afghan instructions I'd chosen were not symmetrical.  One side was different than the other!  This annoyed me to no end.  Not to mention that I discovered that the afghan was going to be a lot narrower than I anticipated.  So I decided to start winging it.  I repeated several rows to give it extra width, and looked through the rest of the book to decide which stitches I liked enough to include in my blanket.

About this time B. got interested in the project.  He liked the look of it.  He suggested that I make it big enough to cover the bed.  The big, huge, king sized bed that comes up to my waist and is fondly referred to as the Monster Bed.  I resisted, but he kept suggesting, and so I modified my pattern again.  I bought more yarn.  Then even more.  I had to wait and ransack various Walmarts because they generally only carried 4-6 at a time, and apparently the had exclusive selling rights on that particular color, because it was the only place I could find it.

The afghan got bigger. And heavier.  And harder to maneuver.  Eventually I stopped working on it, because I'd had a molar removed and was exhausted and achy and recovering slowly, and it was just too hard to deal with.  Plus the weather was getting warmer and I was sitting under a ridiculous amount of yarn.

I didn't attempt to start any other projects during the year because 'I still had that afghan to finish.'  (I did knit a few hats.)  Finally in January I hauled it back out, and finished it in early February 2014.

That center panel is an example of the 'Celtic Weave'