Happy 2018, everyone! I think it’s pretty fitting that my first post this year is about a 2017 crochet-a-long that I participated in – to make a block-a-month afghan. The Ravelry group is full of lovely finished object photos! There’s also a new group if you’re interested in participating in 2018.

I didn’t ever write a post about the squares I made in December, so I thought I’d quickly talk about those here. The afghan was 3 squares a month: two 12” squares and one 6” square.

The first 12” square is the D’Oyley square by Joyce D. Lewis. I used Malabrigo Rios for this afghan, and I crocheted this square in colorways Lettuce, Fresco y Seco, and Teal Feather.

The other 12” square is the One Love Granny square by Rachele Carmona. I used colorways Archangel, Whales Road, and Purple Mystery.

The 6” square is called Winter Bliss, and it’s by Michelle Kovach of The Perfect Knot. I used colorways Sunset, Fresco y Seco, and Whales Road. This square is probably my favorite from December – it’s so neat and cute!

So, without further ado… My afghan!

I really love it, and I can’t wait to use it in my future home someday! And I’m so proud of myself for finishing a year long project. It was extremely rewarding.

I also wanted to say a little bit about how I decided on the layout for my afghan. I basically tried to have my an equal number of squares that have a border in each colorway, and then I laid them out such that no two squares with the same border color touched. I did this by taking a picture of each of the squares so that I could easily play around with organizing them (I used Microsoft Powerpoint for this part).

I love how unique each square is and how loud and crazy the whole afghan turned out to be. I would definitely make another one of these in the future. It’s so much more exciting to make and to look at than afghans that have all the same type of square, in my opinion. I think that this year I’ll do the Box O Sox KAL with Kristin from the Yarngasm podcast instead of making another blanket, though, just because I want to do something different. What other cool year long knit/crochet-a-longs are there out there?