Ah, the culmination of a year of work. I’ve been excited to finally get to this point, because the last afghan I put together was three or four years ago, so this was almost a challenge to myself as to if I could actually finish it. AND FINISH IT I DID!

First, the December square:

I want to say this was my favorite square, but I have a terrible memory so that’s not something I can be held to. I think I just really like the bullion stitch. I also like that on (what looks like) round 8, I used three different shade of blue. This project was a stashbuster for me where I was just trying to use up as many blue shades as I could find in the seemingly infinite amount of yarn I have, so I didn’t have enough of any of those colors to make an entire round. Although I may have mis-estimated, as I still have a bit of each color left.

As for deciding how to arrange the blocks, I just winged it. I was eyeballing how much of any certain shade of blue I used on some of the squares because I didn’t want one shade monopolizing the entire afghan (I have an absurd amount of light blue, so that could have happened pretty easily). By October I started trying to decide which squares should go next to eachother, so by December I was prepared to have a diversely blue afghan.

When I finalized the layout, I had to figure out how to put them together…this was actually a difficult decision for me. I used white as my anchor color, and decided in January to use that color to attach the squares to one another and to use white as the border. Since it was also the only color in each square, I wanted the stitch to be visible. I toyed with the idea of single crochet with the wrong sides together (so there’d be a visible ridge), but it’s not symmetrical and I knew that would bother me. In the end, I went with a stitch I rediscovered by accident (as in, I originally discovered by accident) – backwards single crochet. It’s just single crochet working from left to right, but it creates a cool spiral-ish rope effect that had all the qualities of the joining stitch I was looking for.

I had a difficult time with the border, because I don’t like fluffy frilly things and I felt like everything I tried looked fluffy or frilly. Or terrible. In the end I went with a regular shell stitch – I thought it would look too grandmother-ish but it turns out it just looks like a subtle wave.

The finished product. It looks small because it’s laid out on a queen size bed, but it was meant to be a lap blanket anyway. I’m pretty happy with it considering I went about making it with no direction or plan. I would totally do it again in 2012, but if I do I’ll be starting a bit late because there is just too much going on my life right now, but we shall see!

September’s CAL square was Sunshine Jewel Granny Square, found on the Internet archives.

What I really love about this square is how different each square looks, depending on the colors and on which rounds you change the colors. I have to admit, the way I decide which colors I’m going to use for my square each month is hugely dependent on other group members’ photos of their own squares. Doing an entire square in a single color vs. using four colors can make all the difference in the world. In the case of the Sunshine Jewel (sounds like it should be a Cam Jansen book title), I don’t think I’ve seen a bad combination or order of colors yet – even any solid color blocks look impressive.

This project on Ravelry

August’s square was the Nordic Star square by Priscilla Hewitt. Pattern note via the Ravelry group: “Round 8 correction: replace the number 5 with the number 6 for both repeats.” To be honest, I didn’t even notice it was wrong, because I was going by instinct of how many repeats of stitches there ought to be. Also, I wasn’t listening to anything this time, so I didn’t have to tear it apart and re-do it three times!

But I still like making things difficult. I used regular worsted weight yarn for all the blue bits, but the white yarn is fingering weight. It was all I could find, and I wasn’t about to go out and buy MORE yarn on top of what I already have, so I decided to just make do. And it’s not that bad! It actually reminds me of a snowflake.

I’m glad I went with mostly white with this one, it will add some needed contrast to the finished afghan. It’s probably about time I laid out the squares I’ve completed to see what should go where, and what colors I ought to use for the last four months (I can’t believe there’s only four left!).