Hooked on Needles: August 2017

Summer crocheting is in full swing here in New England the past few weeks as we have been enjoying some unseasonably cool weather. You won't hear a word of complaint from me! I love cool, dry days and cozy nights! A friend recently commissioned me to crochet a twin bed sized afghan for each of her children but I had to tell her that a project like that would most likely have to wait until the hot summer was over and the cool fall weather arrived. And then I ran across a great sale on Red Heart Super Saver yarn, quite by accident since I would not normally drive a half hour to purchase yarn. I'm so spoiled having a Michael's and a Joann's and a Walmart with a good craft department within 5 minutes of my house. For some reason, I looked up AC Moore online to see if I could get a better selection of the colors I needed, and there was the sale announcement! Naturally I had to go! Not only did this store have a good sale, but they also had a better selection of exactly the colors I was looking for. I purchased a boatload of yarn that day! And then the cool weather pattern set in. Perfect timing!

Before I could jump in and start crocheting, I had to make a decision. This was the hard part, deciding what stitch or pattern I was going to use. For the boy's afghan, I had already decided to do a simple corner-to-corner in blues with white in between. For the girl's afghan, blues and purples were requested and I had three shades of each, plus soft white so I had to find a pattern that would look good with all these colors. Time to audition some ideas...

The Red Heart website has so many free patterns to choose from, but I narrowed it down to a few and got to work crocheting a small swatch of this first shell pattern that I thought would look good in gradients of blues and purples. After stitching the pattern as written, I decided the double-triple crochet shells were just too loose for my taste. I am not a fan of afghans with a lot of holes in them, especially for kids. So I rewrote the pattern to use double crochet shells...

...and incorporated a second color once I had the pattern rewritten. It was nice enough, but seemed a bit too busy considering that there would be seven colors involved. This pattern also required a bit too much thought, and I have discovered that thoughtless patterns are so much more relaxing! I must be getting lazy in my old age!

So I moved on to this wave pattern, also from the Red Heart website. It was actually shown in gradients of several colors, so I knew it would work with my colors. The only question was if I would enjoy working the pattern. So I gave it a try. It wasn't too bad, but there was something about it that didn't sit well with me. After working a few repeats, I realized what I was not liking was the extreme shape of the wave. It was too steep, not as gentle as I wanted. So out came those stitches and I kept searching.

These are the colors for the girl's afghan I am making. In order, they are: Soft Navy, Royal, Light Blue, Soft White, Dark Orchid, Medium Purple, Pale Plum, Soft White.

Next time I'll share with you the pattern I finally decided to stick with and some pictures of my progress. The cool weather only lasted a short time and we are heading back into some sticky hot summer weather now, but it was great while it lasted and allowed me to get a head start on this fun project. I'll enjoy summer while it's here, but fall can't come soon enough for me! How about you?

Happy Stitching!