The Manly Afghan

The manly afghan is finished and I couldn't be more pleased. I'm sorry I don't have a digital camera so that y'all can see it, but here are the details for those of you who are interested. I used a huge Q hook and two strands of yarn. Though I used eight different skeins of variegated yarn, I thought of the yarns with red in them as being the background yarn and the blues and the greens as being the yarns to work the pattern with. So, the first two rows and the last two rows are just single stitches, so that the afghan is a little longer than my reach. I'm 5'7", so the afghan will be about that wide (if it opens up how it's supposed to). After my foundation rows, I did a single stitch then a chain stitch so that I was just working every other stitch in the foundation row. Once you start to work the rows that go single stitch, chain stitch, you're just working your single stitch into the chain stitch below so that the whole thing has a kind of basket weave appearance. As you do this, though, it's important to remember that the afghan is going to open up a lot as you wash it and the stitches settle into their proper size. I keep reminding myself of this, because I'm convinced that it's not nearly wide nor long enough, but that's only because I haven't washed it. I hope. Otherwise, W. is in for a winter of cold feet. Anyway, the whole thing is made up of big uneven green and blue stripes with some slim beige stripes worked in to break things up. The background yarn insures that each green and blue stripe looks different from the others. So, even though this doesn't have a political theme, I think it turned out very woodsy and manly and, hopefully, when W. washes it, it'll open up how it's designed to and fit him just fine.