I promised myself that this year- 2019 – I was cleaning out clutter! From everywhere! Including my massive yarn collection. (I also destashed my huge crochet book collection). I feel much lighter already.
I really wanted to add a few afghans to my work this year to help accomplish this task. Some of my favorite and easy ways to do this are my “perfect” beanie pattern, my bag-of-balls toddler toy and easy Afghans, but it really has been a while since I’ve made up an Afghan.
On a side note, I’m also doing an A-Z challenge this year on my Facebook page (also called The Burgundy Basket if you want to find me there) where I take suggestions from my page friends for each letter of the alphabet- and, wouldn’t you know it: one of the suggestions for the letter A was afghan! So, why not go ahead and dive right in.
I finished up this lovely and soft afghan just this afternoon.
Here is the pile I began with.
Now, what I like to do is to hold 3 strands of regular 4-ply worsted weight yarn at the same time, but for this afghan I wanted a cohesive look and not a stash-busting look, so I started with 2, Caron One Pounders in Gray as two of my yarns – then I added one from my pile until it ran out of that color and then added another- but, finish at the end of a row so your stripes work out perfect- I carried the two strands of gray throughout the blanket until it ran out. I started with about 70 chains and then just did double crochet across each row. For my border I used another skein of gray with two colors and did half double crochet around. And look at this fabulous afghan!
I ended up digging a type of all of the colors out of my pile – brick red, very pale blue, vintage gold, turquoise green, pumpkin and lilac. It’s also thick and fluffy! I used my S/19.00mm hook for this blanket, but you can play around and see what hook and stitch gives you the right Afghan.
It’s drying now – after finishing afghans – especially those made with old, vintage, stash yarn, I wash them on cold, gentle with just a wee bit of fabric softener and lay them out flat to dry. This makes the yarn so unbelievably soft!
Here are some more photos. So, get those half-used skeins out and grab your big hook and hook one of these up today! Mine took about 7 hours and there isn’t much thinking involved so it’s a great, mindless project to get done this winter.
