Blue and Beige

During the summer of 2011, while still living in Virginia, my daughter decided it was time to go through her extensive yarn collection.  She had inherited a lot of leftover yarn from my mother as my mom is no longer able to knit due to arthritis in her thumbs.  Since Amanda's bedroom and closet at our house in VA were small she was overrun with stuff.  Out came the yarn and it got dumped into the middle of the living room floor.  (I really wish I had a picture of that!)  As we were sorting, I noticed that there were a number of skeins of different shades of beige and blue and it made me think of the beach.  She gladly gave them to me and with the addition of 2-3 coordinating shades of yarn I was able to make this....

I'm a novice crocheter so the afghan is made from simple granny squares. It was a great project to carry around. I worked on it waiting at music lessons, chess club...as it was so portable. The squares are joined with single crochet stitches. I searched on line for a way to edge it, and am sorry to say that I cannot remember where I found the instructions for this.

First I crocheted around the entire afghan using a single crochet in blue. Then I chained 5 in blue and joined to the afghan edge with a single crochet. I believe I skipped 3 single crochet stitches in between each arc. Once I finished going around, I joined the beige yarn and repeated the procedure, only this time joined with a single crochet in the middle of the previous arcs formed. The final finish was the shell stitch in each of the final arcs - single crochet, half double crochet, double crochet, HDC, SC. I love the way it finished it off - almost lacy.

Since I had some of the beige left over (I had purchased this) I decided to make a pillow top as I didn't want to add back to the stash. The pillow top is just a big granny square (18 inches) and is finished basically in the same way I finished the afghan, only I didn't use the shell stitch in the outer arcs as I ran out of blue yarn.

I finished it off with the flower using a pattern from an old crochet book I had. I had actually made this before finishing the pillow as my original intent was to put a flower at the corner of the squares in the afghan. Decided that this was way too much work and it wouldn't make the afghan very usable. For the pillow itself, I made a pocket pillow and hand stitched the crocheted top to the outer edges. To finish I just had to insert the pillow form.

I am currently working on another one using yarn that I bought in a HUGE grab bag at a thrift store. Incredible retro colors - avocado green, gold, rust. Very 70's. I'll post a photo when it is complete!  

Kathy