I’ve been, to my complete surprise, a little bit obsessed with my afghan. I’m  used to knitting, where the rows seem to never increase at times. So it’s a bit foreign to see each row of this blanket increase so quickly. This is my first linear crochet project, and I’m impressed. Already it’s about 37cm {15 inches} long and I’ve been working on it casually for 12 days. The pattern I used was very narrow {the width of my lap}, so I doubled the pattern so I could refer to it as a blanket, as opposed to a wash cloth.

We watched Beetlejuice last night which I thought was kind of fitting {re: his striped suit, in case it wasn’t clear where I was going with that one}, so I took a couple of pics of my progress to share. First Halloween movie of the season! Yes to cuddling under crocheting.

I’ve been dreaming of crocheting a blanket of my own for a ridiculous amount of time. At the moment I’m taking a fancy to ripple afghans and when I saw this pattern,  I wanted it. It’s an old school black and white catalog picture, so you’re meant to imagine all the wild colors, but I wanted what I saw – a strong b&w pattern. So last night I tackled my first blanket practice pattern {with grey in stead of black}. It’s a bit dodgy on the bottom row, but it’s slowly getting better as you go up. I’m quite pleased with myself as I was able to relatively quickly pick up the pattern – although, they’re meant to be quite straight forward, aren’t they … 

I found a gorgeous pattern on Lion Brand Yarn for a Shaded Ripple Afghan, but since the crochet lingo was blowing my previous minimal amigurimi based mind, I went to YouTube for help. The Art of Crochet by Teresa was a phenomenal help to me. Thanks to Teresa, the Shaded Ripple Afghan pattern lingo makes complete sense to me now and I’m ready. So ready that I bought two ridiculous skeins of yarn {see regular skein pictured alongside}.

The pattern I’ll be using is different to my practice piece – it doesn’t have loops in the double crochet increases. Fingers crossed I also learn to tidy up the sides … 

With a strong contrast of black and white, I’m hoping this blanket will turn out to be quite the accent for my apartment. Is it weird that I’m so excited?