The afghan adventure! September 2, 2011

Two years ago, I decided to knit a queen sized afghan. Simple, right? Well, I wanted to use Tanis‘s yarn for it, and so I had her combining colors for me and take photos so that I could decide from afar.

But I was lacking something I love: Green! Tanis and I gravitate towards opposite sides of the spectrum. She’s a blue and purple gal, I’m a warm greens, corals, reds, orange, browns kinda girl. Rich earthy colors that are fun and bright, too. So I asked her to make a special color for me: chartreuse. I love all aspects of chartreuse, from the vibrant, to the muddy greeny yellow.

And so she did.

This color was later renamed Lemongrass, but in my head, it will always be Katie Green.

And the final color choices were:

Sand as a border, and the insides were: moss (now retired), amber(also retired), stormy, buttercup, royal flush, katie green/lemongrass, chestnut, orangeblossom, and spearmint. I added sunset when it came out, since I still hadn’t finished.

I had some colors on hand to start knitting with.

And then the whole giant order came through after I got home from my summer vacation in Nova Scotia, where Tanis’s family and mine have cottages next door to each other and we became lifelong friends. Look at all that yarn!

It had to go somewhere….away from Myks paws!

And so the caged yarn was born!

So I spent months knitting and blocking hexagons (or as I referred to them, hexes).

And it was put on the backburner during Christmas knitting, and making things for myself, and slowly, but surely, hex by hex, my collection grew. At one point in time, I crocheted together some of them to make a costume for an event.

And it seriously fell out of favor when demand for BeerSox grew. But I kept chugging. One day this past spring, I realized that I only needed a couple more hexes to get to a twin sized coverlet. That’s about big enough to simply lay on top of my queen sized bed. So I gave myself a deadline. My 29th birthday. I had until my 29th birthday to put together that much. That’s a lot of crocheted seams!

So I laid my hexes and decided on a semi-random order.

And started crocheting.

And at about 1 am on my 29th birthday, I finished! I may still finish the last 20 hexes to make it the right size and I may knit a border on, but for now, It’s “done.”. It’s been living on my bed.