2009 - 2012 And Finally Finished!

My Great American Aran Afghan is finally finished.  I had posted earlier about how I laid out all the squares and decided how I wanted to arrange them and then how I had attached each square together.  Well, once that was accomplished, all I had to do was decide what I wanted to do for a border.

The pattern book had suggested a cabled knit border.  It is a lovely border but I decided that I really didn't want to do it.  No particular reason other than the fact that I thought the afghan was "busy" enough with all the different patterns and I wanted to have the focus on them instead of a dramatic ivory cable running all around the edge.

I fell back on my old standard for finishing off blankets and afghans.  I fished out one of my crochet hooks and gathered the remnants of the yarn I had used for the squares.

My next step was to decide what colors I wanted to use.  I decided to use all of the colors that I had used in the afghan itself.  I had a skein of each so I figured that I should have enough.  For the first row, I did a row of single crochet stitches all around the afghan.  The second row, using the same color as the first row, was a row of half double crochet (hdc) stitches in each single crochet stitch although when I came to the corners, I did a hdc then a chain stitch and then a hdc in the corner stitch.

From then on, I did two rows of half double crochet stitches for each color until I got to the final light green color before the last edging stitch.  I just did one row of hdc stitches using that light green.  At that point, I had found an extra ball of Cascade yarn (with a blend of alpaca) laying around that I thought would add a nice touch of drama to the edge so I decided to finish off with that.

I pulled out one of my crochet stitch books and picked a shell /scallop edging.  It was basically do 5 double crochet stitches (dc) in 1 stitch, skip a stitch, do a single crochet stitch in the next stitch, skip a stitch and then repeat the sequence all around the afghan.  When I'd come to the corners, I'd work it so that I'd do a scallop right in the corner stitch and I'd do 6 dc stitches just to give it more ease to get around without curling.  It wasn't an exact science.  I didn't bother counting all of my edge stitches before I started with the final edging.  I figured I could "fudge" a little to get my scallops in the corners and that is exactly what I did.  "Close enough for government work", as we used to say in the Navy.

The afghan is now residing on the back of our living room sofa.  When I was placing it there, the Commander jokingly said, "Hmm, I think I need to take a nap."  I had told him several days ago that he would NOT be allowed to use this afghan when he was napping on the sofa.  I worked too darn hard on it.  I was actually joking.  Well, not joking about working hard on it, but joking about not letting him use it.  Of course, he can use it.  It's not going to just be for show.  I WILL, however, put it away in the hope chest when the grandkidlets are visiting. Fancy afghans, sticky hands, and leaky sippy cups just don't go well together.  Once it's out of the picture, they can't do anything more to that sofa that the dogs and the cats haven't already done.