Progress

Thursday: craft project. I thought I might formally introduce my blanket today and the details. The kind of post I make so that in three months I can still remember where all these links are, and what it was I originally intended. I also remembered to add it to Ravelry.

Pattern : African Flower : I found the African Flower through Elizabeth Cat’s Flickr stream, and she’d originally seen it here. It is a pattern originally found in an Afrikaans magazine, and the Flickr entry I found had, in the comments, a translation of the pattern into English. Now it has its own Flickr group and has turned out to be a very popular pattern. I will be using the join-as-you-go method, also from Flickr.

Yarn : Mostly Vanna’s Choice, with the exception of various stash yarns I’m using up. I tend to crochet blankets in acrylic since it’s easy to care for and not so expensive for large projects. I have a couple of blankets from the 1970s crocheted in acrylic (not as refined as today’s stuff) and they have held up really well over time, better than cotton blankets. Wool wears really well, but of course that wouldn’t work for me (can you say hives?).

Colors : Chocolate, heathered brown, heathered oatmeal, light blue, denim blue, navy. 20 repeats of 16 color combinations.

Size : I’m not entirely sure. Each hexagon is 4.25 inches wide. There are will eventually be 400 of them. It’s going to be roughly square, about 20 x 20 hexagons, which roughly gets me to 85 inches or 7 and some feet. Since the hexagons will stretch, I’m reserving final size judgment at this point. Basically, I want it to be queen sized, which for a comforter is about 86 x 86 inches. Note: it was going to be 256 hexagons, but I realized it wasn’t bed sized, so I upped it. Hey, what else do I have to do on the train?!

Progress : None are completely finished due to the join-as-you-go method. I’m waiting on having more color combinations finished before I start that process. So “finished” right now means up to the white border. I have 48 “finished,” 32 more to the petal row before that, and another 96 flower centers complete and waiting. I have to go back and add another 4 to each group of 16 that I’ve made, so … that means about 224 that I haven’t yet begun.

Apparently people see me multiple times on the train and are watching me work on it and keeping up with my progress. Someone commented this morning that she didn’t know some hexes weren’t going to have blue in them. Interesting!

6′ x 6′

Is that too big? For an afghan? What if I want to roll myself up in it like a taco?

So here’s the next project. Theoretically. I have in my stash of yarn white, dark brown, tweedy medium brown, navy and tweedy medium blue. I added to that tweedy oatmeal and light blue.  I have devised 16 color combinations. I will make 16 of each color combination. It will be an epic afghan. It will probably take me a year to make.

Now let me read you the subtext of this thing:

When I was making the flower afghan, I said to myself, “I  like hexagons. I should do a hexagon afghan.” (I say that about lots of things, but the hexagons seemed to stick in my brain.)

While packing I mused, “Hmm… what project should I take along on the trip? I feel pretty uninspired by everything. Maybe I’ll toss in some stash stuff I can’t fit in this box and see what happens.”

Later after viewing the projects I was going to take, I realized, “You know what? I think I hate making clothing. I have no idea if that $&%$*% red sweater is ever going to even get done. Maybe I’ll just frame it as an tribute to good intentions.”

“I like blue.”

Somewhere in west Texas, I thought “Now that I’m packed up and on the road, I think I might be finally getting nervous about starting a new job. Really nervous. I could really stand to do something mind-numbingly repetitive so I don’t fidget nervously through four states.”

While planning to make it six feet square I considered my previous afghans. “Hm, these blankets have by far been my most successful crafting projects. I’m probably going to wear out my flower afghan. Maybe I should do this again.”

Later, thinking of commuting, “I don’t have to drive! I can take a/an [unknown form of public transportation]. Having small hexagons to work on would be epic.”

Yeah, so.

Hexagon afghan.

P.S. I’m in Bakersfield, California right now. Tomorrow we arrive in SF and start looking for a place to live. Cross your fingers for me, people. This could get ugly.

Why it’s called “crafting”: Flower Afghan

Last night at about 1:30 am I finally finished my daisy flower afghan.  I’m quite pleased with the way that it turned out, which is really lovely, because putting that much time and effort into something you felt ambivalent about would be distressing.  I was so pleased I actually made a special effort with my photography for the finished project.

This blanket epitomizes for me the nature of crafting: a bit of this, a bit of that and a lot of effort.  The patterns are mine and not mine:  part flower pattern I found, edited appropriately, part pattern I made up, a multi-colored checkerboard pattern I came up with and some brown and red borders.  The end result is only a tiny bit talent – some hand-eye coordination and a bit of visualization.  Most of this blanket is just sheer time and effort.  I got a lot of practice crocheting.

So how long did it take?  Well, it took me about an hour to do each block plus a little, and there are 48 blocks, which means about 52 hours.  It took me another 24 hours to do the stitching and borders.  Plus a little time when things go wrong or I have to fix mistakes, another 3 hours.  I’d say that’s a good but conservative estimate of how long it took to make me, and that means I spent over 100 hours of my life spent making this.  I’m quite a bit better at crocheting now.

For the next month or so, you should expect to see a lot of flowers here, this is the beginning.  It’s springtime in the Hill Country, which means wildflowers, which is just about as pretty as it gets for me.  I’ve always preferred simple field flowers to cultivated ones in almost every case.

So there you go! Nice, eh?  I’m very happy it’s finished, and happy it turned out well!