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Vintage style pins, just in time for spring!

A birthday afghan

For our mom's bday, we're making an afghan for her to use at night, while she watches tv on the couch.

Steps to making an afghan
(As illustrated by photos and leslie style TMI notes)

1-select a pattern with how many colors, and variations will occur in your afghan.

This step was simple for us: Deb's house is beachy, so green and blue were a natural combo with tan as the accent or edging color (think=sand). Now with colors decided, 2 colors in the pattern: Which pattern? Why not granny squares? They're fast, easy, and squish nicely into a box for shipping. Cheap yarn which we both can find in our respective states=walmart, red heart yarn. That yarn is also durable and comes in cool shades of green and blue.

At walmart, we chose Teal, Light sage, and buff as our specific shades. Almost a green on green, which works well for Deb because its her favorite color and she has green eyes.

Pattern time! You know, if I've done my math correctly, there are over 25 different patterns we could have done, but two nice ones were a 2:4:5 and a 1:2. I know that means nothing to you, but if I explained that it's the rounds of the dominant color (ours is teal) in a 5 round granny, you get a better idea.

(One note of interest might be gauge across the states. We're doing our best to be the same size, but there could be a bit of a difference...she's on an L hook and I'm on a K, based on our crochet tightness.)

2. Draw it out and practice one of each pattern.

This is easiestly done while sitting at a conference where you could teach the conference session better than your present presenter(s).

3. Divide!

A 9 by 8 granny afghan is 72 squares, divided by 2 and you've got 36 per seester, minus the practice patterns (if they're good enough to use)=35 per seester.

4. Pace!

Seester has 9 days to mail those badboys, so 35 divided by 9 is 4 a day with one day of 3. This is totally a realistic afghan. Mailed on Tuesday.

5. Binding.
Each square must have its own outline, so binding is a bitch. But, once done, we move on to my FAVORITE part of the entire afghan process:

6. Whip it!
Using a large needle and about 2 feet of the binding color, whipping the bound squares together can be a beast, but its my favorite because the final peice comes together.

7. Wash and wrap.
If you own animals and are giving your afghan away, it's courtious to wash it, dry it and wrap it.

More pictures to come!