After taking 9 months to knit a whole afghan, I thought I'd be done with them, at least for a while. But here I am again, making another afghan, but crocheting it this time. Actually, it's done -- took me about 2 1/2 to 3 weeks to complete. It was a gift for a friend of my daughter's. I promised him one when his girlfriend took the afghan I'd made as a Christmas present for them with her to Amsterdam.
I found the pattern on the Lion Brand website. It's "Vanna's Choice Squared Afghan" (pattern no. 70201A). As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to crochet it -- except, I didn't use Vanna's Choice yarn. I stuck with Red Heart because I still had some yarn in my stash that pretty much matched the afghan colors. Of course, I had to purchase MORE yarn to complete it, so I guess I'll always have a stash of some sort.
This was an extremely easy crochet project and an interesting one. It's made up of 9 granny squares (3 x 3), using half double crochet. But instead of crocheting 3 half doubles in the corners, you crochet a half double, a double, and a half double. This creates an interesting square shape that's not quite square and doesn't lay flat. You add 6 rows of half double crochet as a border, continuing with the corners as established. I like to add a row of reverse single crochet as an edging on my afghans, and this one was no exception.
I think he liked it when I presented it to him (he said he did), but it's shorter than the one I made for the Christmas present, so I'm actually thinking about making him another one. Plus, my daughter said the colors were "girlie," and I really didn't include his favorite color which is blue. I was more concerned with using up my stash which I now think is impossible to do.
But it'll have to wait until I finish the one I'm now working on for my daughter's birthday. This time, I'm just going to do 3 half-double-crochet corners, and I've included the colors SHE selected, something that will enlarge my stash even more because I'm having to guess at how much additional yarn I need. I'm also going to add 3 more squares so that the piece is 3 x 4 squares instead of 3 x 3).
I'll post it once I'm done. I don't want her to accidentally see it here. She knows I'm making her something for her birthday but, knowing her, she's probably figured it out.





















