Monday, March 21, 2011

In the meantime...

Last week I was forced to put away ALL OF MY QUILTING (which occupies all of our dining room) in order to make room for some guests that will be staying with us until the end of March. Remember the adorable little lady and her wonderful mommy that I visited in this post? Well, they are moving to Germany in a few weeks and are staying with us to get all their visiting in before they cross the pond. 

Since I knew that they were coming (months ago) I have been trying to think of what to craft while we have company. I couldn't get inspired to knit wintery things like mittens and scarves, because I am SO OVER winter. 

Given that, I pulled out this item from my bucked list. It is the "Finish crocheting hexagon granny square afghan". This project was entirely inspired by one of my favorite bloggers, Lucy @ Attic24. She is a wonderful blogger and she inspired me to learn how to crochet a few years ago when I saw this post.

I immediately went to the yarn store and grabbed lots of yarns in lots of colors and started going on this project. I know that I needed 7 colors (thought process: a hexagon has 6 sides, plus one for the center = 7. But I didn't want any of the 6 sides, to be the same color as each other or as the center, so I needed 7 colors total, if that makes any sense at all to you). I wanted this afghan to be a summer blanket, so I made it out of cotton yarn so that it was nice and light. I used 100% Cotton Cotton Ease yarn in these colors:

 (White, taupe, celery, off-white, coral, mustard, navy)

The accountant in me knew that I needed a plan of action to tackle all of these colors, so this is what I came up with to keep this project organized:

 (Yes, I do understand that it might not make any sense at all to you, but it basically tells me which order to use the yarns, for each grouping of 7 hexagon squares. It really does make sense, I promise!)

Did I mention that I started this project long before I got engaged, so that makes it almost, umm, 2 years ago? I kind of lost my steam with the project and planning a wedding was a perfect reason to take a break. This is what I had accomplished already:

(There are 5 groups of 7 hexagons each which = 35 hexagons done!)

(I also had this group done, however, they weren't organized at all. This required some patience, as I had to match up each hexagon to the excel spreadsheet above and organize them as I did the others)


Ok! So here are all my hexagons, all sorted and organized so that I know how many rows I have done and how many I have left.


I have 8 stacks of 7 hexagons = 56 hexagons total. If you look at the excel file, you may noticed that I have 7 groups or rows of hexagons lined up. I mapped out what the hexagons will look like for 7 groups of hexagons. See the pic below... from left to right... that is row/group 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Notice that I have 2 stacks under row 1, that's because I plan on doing each row/group of hexagons two or 3 times to get a blanket big enough. So eventually I will have 2 or 3 of each row/group 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Makes perfect sense right? Sure....

I hope to make good headway on this project while my girlfriend and her daughter are visiting. I might just stop at 2 stacks for each row/group, which means that I will need to have 14 x 7 = 98 hexagons total. I have not yet tried to put the hexagons together and considering I am new to crocheting (like, this is my first project) I have literally no idea what I am going to do. I would really love some advice from all you crocheters out there!


xoxo

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