Arrows afghan

As a matter of course, I only do afghans which can be done in pieces and then stitched together. I don't want a project that keeps growing and growing until it's ridiculously unwieldy to haul around with me. I did that exactly once and it ended up stopping at half size (a baby blanket instead of twin-bed size) because I couldn't deal with it any longer. Also, I don't sew the pieces together; I single crochet my seams.

So for this Arrows afghan from Scraps and Black I made eight "scarves" and then edged each and joined them, then edged the whole. And because my colors generally tend towards the darker end of the spectrum, I brightened up the whole by using white instead of black as my unifier. Usually my biggest mental hurdle is in the colors -- both which colors to use and what order to use them. But this one was very freeing because I just stocked up on colors I already had ends and pieces of, and while I did think a few arrows out within a scarf, I didn't think through the same pattern for each scarf. Of course then I ended up with eight scarves and I didn't want to order them laterally, but I neatly sidestepped that too, by asking my niece E to find an order that she liked.

I'm not sure why this particular afghan took so long, but I was working on it during three different Super Bowls. (Go Ravens!) I do a lot of crocheting during football season because when my hands are busy crocheting, I'm not nibbling the entire time the tv is on.

Project duration: Jan 2011-Mar 2013.