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.
