Warming Up America

Finally...the afghan I started over a year ago for an organization called, "Warming Up America," is complete.  I became aware of the project from my daughter-in-law, Kim, who brought me a flyer  explaining how to become involved in the organization.  She said she thought I might be interested.  I went online to find out more.  I liked the idea that they presented.  Some years ago, a group of ladies started making afghans for needy neighbors.  Eventually, they expanded into doing this.  They ask people to knit 7 x 9 blocks and send them in to be joined with other blocks to complete afghans.  Or, a completed afghan can be sent.  At first, I was going to just do a few blocks and send them off, but then I decided that I would like to complete a full afghan myself.  I was afraid my blocks would not fit with other people's, so I wanted to give it a try.  I have made so many afghans myself that I did not think it would be any big deal.  However, since a full sized afghan that they were expecting takes 49 blocks.  That is a lot of blocks to make, but I didn't expect that it would take me so long.  Of course, I didn't spend the whole time working on just that afghan.  I had all those Christmas projects to finish in between.  I only worked on the afghan when I wasn't working on Christmas projects.  Since Christmas, I have worked only on the afghan as far as knitting is concerned. The afghan consists of seven different patterns and fourteen different colors.  I wanted to use up some of my unused yarn from other projects.  That meant that I couldn't have the same number of blocks done by each color.  Some have two, some three, and some four blocks of a color.  I also wanted to be sure that none of the patterns had two of the same color.  When I assembled the blocks, I wanted to also be sure that I never repeated a color in any row or column.  I decided to keep each column with the same pattern  and each row with one of each of the patterns.  I had more dark colors than light ones, so I was not able to distribute the dark and light as well as I had hoped to do and still keep no colors repeated in the rows and columns.  It was a juggle, but I finally came up with something that I feel works, not as well as hoped for, but still okay.  Here is the final project.

I have never tied the corners of the blocks before, but I didn't like the way the color I used for joining the blocks together showed through on the front.  I used the light brown color for the seams, but chose the white for the border and the joint ties.

I mentioned this project to the ladies at church.  I offered to teach knitting to any of them that would be interested, or just have anyone who wanted to join us in making enough blocks to complete a smaller afghan.  Either a lap or baby afghan are also accepted.  I figure that we could easily do that if each lady made one block. I think that the basket weave stitch would be a good one to use.  It uses both of the basic stitches of knitting, the knit and the purl stitch.  I think the plain stockinette stitch of using the knit stitch on the front side and the purl on the back, which is the traditional look of knitting, is too stretchy for afghans. The basket weave alternates the use of the knit and purl stitches on the front and back.  This gives texture to the look and outcome of the knitting.  It will also allow the new knitters to practice the two stitches of which all patterns are made.