Colorful Granny Afghan - finally finished!

I was right. We came home every day exhausted and stinky from cub scout camp, but loved every minute of it! I do, however, think I am better suited to less rustic living! Anyway, the week is over, my son had so much fun trying things he never would have had the opportunity to do otherwise, we both made new friends and got lots of exercise and fresh air. I think he's looking forward to next year's cub scout camp already. I am quite happy to wait a whole year before having to do it again!

The week before scout camp, we were away on our family vacation and I've already shown some of the shopping I was able to do at Patternworks and Keepsake Quilting. But I also worked on a project during the evenings after the kids were in bed and it was quiet except for the sounds of the loons on the lake.


Using the leftover yarn from the afghan I crocheted for my son a few years ago which is pictured at the bottom of THIS POST, I crocheted as many solid granny squares as I could from each color to use up the yarn. You will find my video tutorial for this block by clicking HERE. I ended up with enough for a nice size afghan...


My goal for our vacation week was to finish adding the black single crochet border around each block so I could begin to piece them together. I did that, and then we all took turns arranging the blocks. The arrangement above is what Elizabeth, our oldest, came up with. She liked the red edges and the random placement of the other colors.


Then Grace, who is 5, took her turn and this is what she liked. Not too mixed up, but not too together either. I asked Sean, who is 7, if he would like to arrange the blocks too and he took one look at what Grace had done and said, "Nah, that looks good to me" ... I really think any arrangement would have been fine with him!


This is the arrangement my husband came up with. He was having a hard time with the idea that there was no middle square to work from since there were only 48 squares altogether, and there were not the same number of each color. But he spent a good deal of time on it and ended up with an arrangement he liked.


Then it was my turn. I started with the red squares which had the most, and just laid them out in a spiral from most to least...


...then I shifted them by one square so that one red was the last square in the spiral...


...then I tried rainbow order...


...but ultimately ended up with completely random, with a few tweaks here and there to evenly spread out the colors.


Using this method of chain piecing the blocks together with single crochet, I got to work connecting all the blocks. This is where I ended working on the project during vacation. The rest was done at home and finished a few evenings ago.


And here's the finished afghan, all ready to be listed in my Etsy shop soon. If you're interested in more details of this afghan, or if you would like purchase it, just pop on over and check it out! I'd love to see you there too!

I did have a little down time each day at scout camp, so I brought a little project with me to work on. I'll show you the results of that and the rest of my vacation fabric shopping this week. I'm also hoping to get a video done which was requested by a reader some time ago. I know she is anxious for it and it is at the top of my list. So lots more coming up here at Hooked On Needles! I hope your summer is just as fun and productive!

Happy Stitching!

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