An Afghan for Baby Jack

I recently was inspired by the works of my great-grandmother Minnie to take up crocheting. I have been a cross stitcher for years but it was getting boring and I needed something different. I studied several afghans that Minnie had made (in her later years she had arthitis in her hands really bad and she would crochet all day just to keep the joints moving - as a result we all have tons of afghans!) to see how she did it and began recreating what she did. I mostly taught myself how to crochet, going off of what I had learned years ago making Granny Squares in Girl Scouts.

Over Christmas I bought a crocheting book at the Ben Franklin store in Newport News, VA and decided to learn for real! I started a my 1st "real afghan" in January and have been crusing along. I'm using a the same "pattern" that Minnie used which is basically a large center of solid color bordered by a contrasting color - simple yet effective.

With Susan and Mike's impending adoption I knew I had to do something crafty. I was going to cross stitch something but I'm still bored with cross stitch so, about 2 weeks before the shower I decided I'd tackle my 1st baby afghan! I went to Michael's and started optimistically at the books with awesome crochet patterns in them - some of these afghans were gorgeous and I wanted to make every one, but I was thwarted by my lack of ability of read a crochet pattern. So I went over the yarn section and picked out some soft, shimmery yarn - baby blue and white - and decided to use my simple, yet effective Minnie Pattern. When I got home I decided to use my giant afghan hook to make things go a bit faster.

When I did the white I did two double crochets in each "hole" to make it look fuller - I'd used that technique on an afghan I'd done over the summer - I was just messing around at that point - and it looked nice so I decided to try it again. Didn't seem to work so well with this yarn - either that or I need more work on my corners - because all four corners of the finished afghan curl up like little hoods or a fitted sheet. I noticed that was starting as I was in the home stretch for finishing it at 11:30 yesterday morning - the shower was at 3 and I was on the party planning committee so had a number of things to do before!

Below is the finished product - in the flat picture you can see the turned up corners.

I'll toot my own horn for a minute here and say that it came out really nice - it's soft and lightweight yet warm! I can see Susan tucking it around Jack in his car seat or stroller! I'll have to work on perfecting my crocheting techniques!