A finished project

As I said in my last blog I have been working on an afghan for my youngest daughter.  And the thing you need to remember when making something for a ten year old is that their sense of color and yours might not match.

I admit we are using up yarn left over from my deceased mother in law's knitting hobby.  She left us with a huge amount of yarn, most of it in white and pink.  I let my daughter dive in and pick what she wanted and then started the project.  For this afghan I used a Boye size N or 9.00MM aluminum hook

Yup not the best pic but gives you an idea what I used.  I then chained 21 stitches and went on to crochet single stitches.  Now anyone who knows me understands that I hate working from a pattern.  I worked the rows till I felt the squares were big enough.  In this case the length from the base of my palm to the tip of my longest finger looked right. 

As I was making this for my daughter's bed I had to figure out how many squares I would need to cover the typical twin size mattress.  After I put together a dozen or so squares I went up and lay them on the edges of the bed.  This gave me the measurements of 7 squares across and ten down.  So obviously I needed 70 squares to cover her bed entirely.

Taking my time between working on writing short stories, making homemade yummy flavored chocolates, baking and of course the rest of my wifely duties this project took me about a week.  I used up a lot of different left over skeins of yarn as you can see.

Then I took the squares and attached them together but a simple single stitch again, giving the afghan an interesting frame to each square.  First I did the squares in rows of seven so that I could try to instill a bit of pattern to this wild mix of colors, textures and weights of yarn.  Then I attached those strips together trying to again do something a bit more pattern like.  In the end I crocheted first a row of single stitch in white to finish the edges all the way around and then a row of double stitch to complete the project.

As soon as I did my daughter took it from me, lay down on the floor and watched tv wrapped in her new blanket.  That is a testament to your work, when the person you intend the project for loves it.

Now I know most afghans are done to patterns and match in color, texture, weight, style and stitch but you don't need to look like a professional project for the person you give it to to love it.  Get out that left over yarn and pick a hook and just go for it. 

Next I have planned a bunch of knitting loom projects.  A friend is having a baby and she will need baby hats, little tiny mitties (scratch mittens they are called) and of course baby blankets.  I will put them up as I make them.