Granny Stripes Blanket

There are a lot of granny stripes folded up right there!  This blanket ended up being a bit larger than planned, but since I was making it for the coolest 14 year old boy I know, it wasn't hard to keep plugging away at it!



It ended up being about 76 inches square, and large enough to fit on a queen size bed, like you can see above.

It sounds funny, but for the pattern I used a dishcloth pattern.  As a Christmas gift I had made a Granny Stripes dishcloth (Ravelry pattern page HERE) from the Lily/Sugar'n Cream Country Kitchen pamphlet (#570827), so I just adjusted the initial chain length size to what I thought a good afghan size would be.  I chained 230 for the starting chain, and after I finished the first row of double crochet groups, I realized it was a bit longer than I thought it was going to be!  But after how long it took to do that first row into the chain (you crocheters I'm sure can relate to the time consuming annoyance of properly crocheting into a starting chain!), I decided to just go with it!



For the other crochet specifics, I used a size J (6mm) hook and worsted weight acrylic yarn.  I used Vanna's Choice (my personal fave!) in the colors Burgundy, Dark Grey Heather, Charcoal Grey and Silver Grey, and the Teal was a Red Heart Soft yarn.  (This was the first time I had used the Red Heart Soft as opposed to the Red Heart Super Saver yarn, and I was impressed with how "soft" it actually was!)  In total, I used a pretty scary number of skeins... I think it was 27!  I'm sure that's a record number for one project for me!



I had a lot of fun playing with the colors and widths of the stripes.  I wanted it to look random, but still well balanced... a look I like to call "organized chaos!"  I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  I think it's going to be well loved and much used, which makes me happy!