FINALLY! *shouts from rooftop* Learn-to-Crochet afghan is COMPLETE!

Some time ago I bought a book called Crochet Your Way. Back in 1999 or 2000, I decided that I wanted to learn to crochet so that I could make a baby blanket for whenever my brother had his first kid, but I wanted to learn it from the ground up. Almost literally. I bought angora goats and rabbits for my little 9-10 acre plot of land which I was living on at the time. While I was able to shear them, I never did quite make it all the way through picking, cleaning, carding and spinning and so never had anything approaching real yarn with which to learn to crochet. Miles, of course, finds this train of logic complete baffling. “You wanted to learn to crochet, so you bought … GOATS?!” *downcast* “Well, when you put it THAT way it does indeed sound backward.”

Having learned it might be better to work from the top down in this case, I purchased the above reference book. I chose this book out of the hundreds available because the very first project was a patchwork afghan in which each block was designed to get progressively more challenging. There are a total of 20 blocks. Now other folks on Amazon panned the book because they didn’t realize what the authors had done — in order to understand the patterns after the afghan, you had to have worked your way THROUGH the afghan. The first blocks were very basic, with both a complete map and the long-hand descriptions. As you went through them, the maps gave way to abbreviated text, but this transition was slow enough that it was easy to follow. I come from a very long line of craft-savy women, and so the fact that I didn’t know how to crochet was a bit … well, sad. This deficiency, I must say, is now FIXED.

It took me 4 years, or there abouts. I started working on this in early to mid 2004, I believe it was, when I was living with Thumbcat. I remember joking that I’d have to bring it into the testing lab where I worked at that time because it was so damn cold in the lab, so I think this is indeed when I started it. Well, it’s now early 2008 and, finally finally finally, the whole thing is assembled. YAY! There are 4 blocks across, by 5 blocks high, making this afghan roughly queen size. *chuckles* When you examine each block closely, you can almost see the point at which the yarn lightbulb went off and I got what was being asked of me. As a result, the top of every block looks better than the bottom. The only technique I never *really* got the hang of was the block which features the people and the heart (top right), so that one is ugly stem-to-stearn.

Here’s the right side of the thing, since each block is very different:

Here’s the left side of the thing:

I remember when I first started. I’d look with horror at block 1 and think “I can never figure this out!”. Finally, I figured it out and would look at the next block thinking “egad! THIS is one that’s going to be a challenge.” After a few blocks, I’m skipping ahead to look 4 or 5 blocks from where I am and think those would be hard ones. Finally, after about 1/2 to 2/3s complete, I’m looking ahead thinking “I can do that”. It was quite an amazing process! I admit, I almost threw the whole thing into the fire had it not been for the internet! I couldn’t make heads or tails of the stupid drawings that tried to explaine what a basic single crochet stitch was, and then I found a site similar to this one which offered free video instructions on what the stitch looked like. That was quite literally the key which unlocked my understanding of the entire process. Thank you to whomever takes the time to put such stuff on-line! And this was in the days before YouTube was really popular, so now it’s relatively easy to find such video based instruction.

There are a lot of areas that’s very obvious this is a beginner’s project: the blocks are heinously mismatched, sizewise. I had to do a lot of fill work to get the tiny compack blocks large enough to work with the larger blocks, and so when putting the rows together this was a mite tedious and actually, I think delaying this process almost doubled the amount of time between project start and project complete. heh. I think it worked out well enough though, particularly since afghans tend to get pulled on and stretched with use anyway, but working on my tension consistancy is definitely something I need to be aware of. Also, I’m very much not confident in my knot tying skills. I tend to over-knot the places where color changes occur, or at the end of a block. Fortunately, it’s thick yarn so the knots get swallowed up but still, it’s something else I need to work on.

This project could certainly have been finished a whole lot faster than 5 years, like say perhaps 1 year or so of relaxed but continuous effort. I learned tons on this project, and while I personally think the end result is rather ugly (I call it the World’s Ugliest Afghan), Miles is quite fond of it. When he’s sick, he pulls it out and wraps himself up in it because knowing that it was made entirely by hand somehow offers him great psychological and emotional comfort. He’s looking forward to my learn-to-knit projects so I can make him knit sweaters. Who knew? heh.

While this was the very first crochet project I undertook, it’s actually the second one finished. I was on the 2nd or 3rd block when I heard that my brother’s wife was expecting their first child. Since I’d had it in my mind for a goodly while that I would crochet a baby blanket for his first kid, the timing couldn’t have been better. I found a simple crochet pattern using stitches worked through in the blocks I’d already completed, and set about making this baby afghan. It turned out very well, but I didn’t get any pictures of it. I’ve asked my brother if he can send me some for documentation purposes.

I showed this patchwork afghan to mom while she was here. It had been 90% complete for almost a year at this point (all assembled but for 1 row and some cleanup). She said she didn’t recognize half the stitches used, which was interesting. I HIGHLY recommend this book if (a) you are the type of person who wants to learn a whole lot in a relatively small amount of time and (b) you want to make an afghan but don’t want to focus on just one stitch for the entire duration. There is only 1 other pattern in this book I want to make, but I figure I should get some of the other projects off my plate before I start buying yarn for this new one. hehe.

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