Start of Something Big

Thus far, my crochet projects have been small, but I'm ready for something bigger. I have been wanting to do an afghan for awhile, but I never quite settled on a pattern. Then I saw the Gardening at Night Bag (Rav link) in Debbie Stoller's Stitch Nation booklet, and I knew it was the one. The bag is assembled from hexagons that are outlined in a dark color, which makes the circular flower motif in the middle really pop. There are other hexagon patterns that are very similar, but hers is subtly tweaked in a way that makes it look more flowery to me.

When my LYS had a sale recently, I picked out 4 different colors of Berroco Vintage and Cascade 220 Superwash, along with a dark brown 220 for the edges. I used 3 of the colors so far and here's what I have:


I calculated that I would need about 300 hexagons to make the afghan size I want (4' x 6'). Assuming I want to use 3 different colors per hexagon, with 4 different colors of yarn, I can get 4x3x2=24 different combinations. That's nice, but I thought it would be fun to have each block be unique, so I needed to get more colors. With 8 different colors, I could get 8x7x6=336 combinations. Perfect!

I headed back to my LYS today and pulled together some more colors that I thought would work together. With help, I edited out some that were too bright, too dark, or too close to a color I already had. The field was narrowed down to 7 total colors,


but I was still struggling to find the last one. Luckily for me, Janet happened to come into the shop, even though she was not scheduled to work. And guess what she found for me?


The blue is an inspired choice that adds an unexpected pop, and I love it. I wish I could have gotten the colors to show more true in these photos. The blue has some green in it, and the lighter green is more the color of young leaves, and not the minty color you see there. Thanks, Janet :-)

Looking forward to the next 295 hexagons! (We'll see how long that lasts)