Livin' in a Van...down by the river!: Afghan Revised

A few weeks ago I started to doubt that my plan for my RV afghan was going to actually look good when I was done. Not only that but the square I’d used was one of those that is full of holes, nice for some uses, but I wasn’t sure on an afghan that was intended to be used rather than decorative.

When I started the afghan I’d realized I’d likely be left with a bunch of scraps and decided that they would look cool if I made a rug – stitching all the scraps together in rows – rows of varying length and not really in a pattern. As I worked on the afghan I thought that a striped pattern might have been a better approach than the squares. It was a good idea, but I was already knee deep in making big squares so I forged ahead.

Last weekend I finished my 7th, of 9, big square. The end was in sight, I was thinking I might even get it done before my 1st big camping trip! Then I laid all the finished squares out on the floor and realized that while I liked the colors, there was simply too much of any one color in one place. It really didn’t work.

I’d thought maybe I would just forge ahead and either learn to like it or donate it to Project Linus and start a new afghan. I didn’t want to have to take the time to rip out the work I’d done and I was thinking that I couldn’t use the yarn in the squares since it was in small pieces from stitching and joining the squares.

Friday night I settled in to crochet and I’d completely lost my motivation to work on the afghan. I had no desire to stitch the final 2 squares knowing the project looked like crap. I was frustrated because so many of my crochet projects end up like that – great ideas, that end up looking like crap. I decided I rip apart one of the squares to see if I could do it easily. I was rather surprised when I was able to undo an entire weekends worth of stitching in less than 30 minutes. Kinda sad, yet liberating at the same time. I was freed from the crappy design and free to use the yarn in a way that looked good and that I liked!

I quickly formed my plan to create a striped afghan using simple double crochet to make it dense and warm and easy to mindlessly stitch. It’s 200 stitches wide so each row takes awhile but it should be big enough to really use. I quickly started a list of which color came next and how many rows of each color I needed. When I bought the yarn I got several skeins of different colors that I hadn’t included in my original plan, now I could get them in, which means I will hopefully have more than enough yarn. I also realized that rather than sitting here an unraveling each square and rolling in into a ball, I could stitch the new afghan directly from the old square! Genius!

I spent almost the whole day yesterday crocheting and I’m anxious to get started again today! I LOVE the way it looks now and I’m so excited about it! So glad I decided to abandon all my work and start over! All of the colors are earth tones and I’m stitching them kinda sorta in sections – flower colors, sky colors, beach colors, rock colors, etc… It’s very appropriate for my camping vehicle! The only 2 problems are that it’s going to take forever to get it long enough and ironically enough it’s not at all a portable project, I need my full palate of yarn as I’m constantly revising which color comes next!