Zooty Owl's Crafty Blog

Colourful Crochet, Craft, Cooking, and Contemplations

Saturday, 11 January 2014

Double Crochet Stripe Afghan

At some point during 2013 a whole stash of Elle Charity Chunky was purchased on a whim!

Just before Christmas I had finished up all my WIP's and was undecided what to do next.    We were having some lovely rainy weather - a good time to tackle the Chunky project.     Something quick and easy - not requiring too much thought or effort - or so I thought!  

Was I in for a surprise?

I tried hook after hook size - before finally settling on a 7.00mm.    Then I tried out pattern after pattern after pattern after .....  Nothing seemed right!

I tried squares - nope.     A big granny - nope.     A ripple - nope.    Granny stripe - nope.     Diagonal granny - nope.    Box stitch - nope.    Diagonal box stitch - nope.

At that juncture I was - extremely annoyed and worked up!

I was NOT going to pack the chunky away - I WAS going to best it (the deciding factor here was that after removing all that chunky from my yarn cupboard and rearranging the rest of my stash quite satisfactorily I had NO intention of trying to get the chunky back into the cupboard!)

Eventually out of sheer desperation I tried a plain old double crochet stripe.   Not too bad after a couple of rows.......    and then it started taking shape.     So easy and quite nicely textured.     I calmed down and started enjoying the project.


 double crochet stripe

I worked up row after row in mauve, blue and grey.


double crochet stripe

Bordered it with a few rows of single crochet and gave it a nice  bobble fringe (about twelve hours work start to finish - what a bargain!)

Even with the border the double crochet stripe was a bit boring - and so taking inspiration from my lovely popcorn cushion, I made heaps of yellow flowers, orange flowers and lime green leaves.


crocher flowers

Appliqued them on to the bottom and top corner:

double crochet afghan


It fits quite nicely on a 3/4 bed (had to fold it to get the flowers in the photo).

Must say I am rather delighted with it!