Ghosts of Afghans Past

[lydy]

Like everyone, ever, who dabbles in knit and crochet, I have acquired a large number of odds and ends of yarn from projects. Sometimes, it's the result of an over-buy, but often, it's the tail end of a skein. After a while, they start to occupy a lot of space. There's an entire genre of garbage or remnant afghans, afghans made from scraps of left-over yarn. I've seen several patterns designed for this, but haven't liked any of them. On the other hand, I noticed when I made my first in the current series of afghans that the pineapples, as individual units, didn't take a lot of yarn. I made a mental note to try that pattern for a remnant afghan once I had enough remnants to want to get rid of them.

I don't usually work in a lot of colors. My color sense is unreliable. It is, I think, getting better, but it's not really my gift. However, in this case, since I was working with so many colors, it seemed like I could get away with the occasional infelicitous combination. Either it would be overwhelmed by the riot of color, or maybe even look like I was trying to tell a silly joke with the color. I tried hard to randomize the colors so that there wasn't a clear pattern. When I worked it up, I had compared the color both to the pineapple to which it was being attached, and the ones that it would be adjacent to, as well as trying to keep an eye out for larger trends and patterns. I was, I think, somewhat successful.

I really like the Butter color of Michael's Loops and Threads Soft and Shiny yarn, so I decided to use that for the inside border and the black of the same brand for the outside border of each of the strips. Alas, I underestimated how much butter colored yarn I would need, and overestimated how much I had in my stash. And, of course, the color has been discontinued. Eventually, I contacted several people on Ravelry who listed that yarn in their stash, offering to buy it at twice the list price, plus shipping. Two different people kindly responded, and sold me the yarn I needed to complete the afghan. So, yes, I spent $30 on yarn to complete a remnant afghan. Irony, much?

Since this was an experiment, and I was unsure how the colors were going to work, I did this on spec. When I was about a third of the way through, Eric Forste admitted to an admiration of it, so I gave it to him. Well, will give it to him. He's been using it when he was at my house, but I haven't let him take it home, yet, since I needed pictures of it. Now there are pictures, so he can cart it off to his lair. And since there are pictures, you can see it, too! (Thank you, David, for the pictures.)

What do you think?







And, of course, one featuring Ninja, who is also Eric's favorite cat at our house. (I don't have a picture of Ninja riding on Eric's shoulders while he makes coffee in the morning, but I wish I did, because it's about the cutest thing, ever.)

Comments

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Love it! Love Ninja in action, too!

That Butter is a wonderful neutral. It's soft enough next to the black while also going with every one of the pineapples. (So of course they discontinued it. Duh.)

[lydy.livejournal.com]

The Butter yarn has a lovely peach, almost pink undertone, which makes it very warm. There's a Caron Simply Soft that's a very similar color, but it has a greenish undertone which I don't like nearly as well.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Oh, nice!

One of the neat things about remnant projects is that the remnants carry memories of the original projects, so it's sort of like a scrapbook. In this case, it's a warm, cuddly, pretty scrapbook.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. As I was working on this, I kept on being reminded of previous projects, almost all of which were successful. And I got rid of the last of the one skein of the Red Heart Super Saver that I hated so much. The color's nice, and since it's distributed through out the afghan, it doesn't really create a problem.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Beautiful! The black and butter yellow give it a wonderfully unified effect, so It doesn't have a using up remnants look. But it helps too that your remnants are lovely colors to start with. My sisters and I joke that we can always tell Grandma's quilts from the scraps of lime-green fabric in them. See, lime-green fabric isn't very popular, so it was always on sale, and Grandma was very thrifty. . . .

But yes, I've rarely found that I have been able to use up remnants without buying something more, typically for the unification. Still, there's an overall reduction in remnants, right?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

My grandmother was the same way. She made the most hideous stuff, out of the most amazingly horrible yarn. Because it was cheap. The colors were astoundingly garish, and the texture amazingly unpleasant. There was one year she made us slippers out of rug yarn. The yarn was a hard plastic which, once worked up with a crochet stitch, was actually too harsh and abrasive to walk on, it hurt your feet. It was also a garish combination of an unflattering electric blue with a magenta border which managed to make it even uglier than it was already. Since she crocheted, and didn't knit, at least we were spared sweaters.

[bonz-lizard.livejournal.com]

I love all the colors! Makes me think of a newly opened box of crayons!

[susandennis]

Absolutely fabulous. kudos!

[redbird]

I think it's a good thing you told us it was taken before I got a chance to start wanting it.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

You know, I do take requests...

[naomikritzer]

That's really cool looking and makes an excellent backdrop for your gorgeous kitty.

[boxofdelights]

That is lovely.

[cowfan.livejournal.com]

I think it turned out really well. The colors are spread out in a good balance and variety. I'm curious about the fleur de lis effect on each side of the black stripes. How did you do that?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Um, that's hard to describe. When you do the border around the interlocked pineapples, you create some loops with chain stitch, and then when you do the black, there are some long triple-stitches into the round below, the create Vs...I could show you the pattern, if you want. It's one of the many things I like about this pattern, although my triple-crocheted Vs never look quite as crisp and striking as the examples.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

That is fantastically beautiful!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Oh what fun!

[quility.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous! And amazing for being so thrifty too!