Mystery afghan final thoughts (and pictures)

The afghan is washed, all loose ends are trimmed, there’s a gray duvet on the bed (thanks, Mom!) and the afghan is on top! And it only took almost two months. With much contortion to get this photographed in our tiny bedroom, here it is in situ.

finished mysteryghan on bed

And some thoughts….
I have no idea how to make the fuzzy tips of the yarn disappear. In amigurumi, you just hide them inside a stuffed part of the piece. Here, no matter how good my weaving job (and I can’t say it’s that good) I can’t seem to hide the very ends of the yarn.

I’m very pleased with the look and structure of my join. It lends the piece such interest.

I like the feel of Red Heart With Love much better than Classic – some of the Classic was almost crunchy off the skein – but it was unexpectedly difficult to find two coordinating shades of gray. After washing, it’s better, but still clearly not as soft.

I’m in no hurry to make another item this large!

So you can see all of it, I undertook some additional contortions to spread it out on the floor. It doesn’t really fit but you can see it pretty well anyway.

finished mysteryghan laid out in the living room

Circumscribing the mystery

The afghan is bordered! Amazing. It takes rather a while to get all the way around a queen-sized afghan.

Anyway. After adding the Greek key panels, I went back to clue 8 for the border. I read a project note that opined the border was too curvy for such a geometric afghan, but it reminds me of wrought iron, which goes perfectly with the stained glass idea.

long shot of mysteryghan border - colors are odd because I tweaked it for visibility of detail

[The photo looks a little unreal because I brightened the shadows so you could see the texture of the border, and then tweaked the tint and saturation because it looked unappealingly washed out.]

The pattern described the border as cable stitch, but it’s not like what I think of as crochet cable stitch. Instead it’s a series of arcs that slightly overlap each other. I changed it a little bit, but just the very beginning (and consequently the end) and how it acts at corners.

For the single crochet base (round 2), of course I didn’t have the right stitch count. Just make sure that each side stitch count is a multiple of 3, not counting the stitches in the very corners (the middle of the 3 sc made into the previous corner stitch). [In particular, on side 1 don’t count your first sc, because it will become the middle of 3 at the end.]

Mark the joining slip stitch of round 2 with a stitch marker. In round 3, when you make your first arc, skip 3 stitches, not two. Mark the first of those skipped stitches with a stitch marker – that is where your last arc will connect – and make sure when you “sc in 2 skipped sts” they are the unmarked two.

diagram for the first 3 corners of the afghan border Proceed down the side, skipping the next 2 unworked stitches each time you attach a new arc, until you get to the corner. You’ll attach an arc to the very corner stitch, and the next arc will be joined to the next stitch after: make the “sc in 2 skipped sts” 2 sc in the very corner stitch, to make 3 sts in the corner counting the previous arc’s end. In the diagram, the heaviest lines are round 2. The dashed lines are the “sc in 2 skipped sts.”

When you get to the last corner, the arc that is attached to the very corner stitch will be attached to the slip stitch you marked. You can try to attach it to the same sc as the sl st is made into, which is really where it belongs, but that might be difficult. diagram for the last corner of the afghan border The next arc, which is the one that cups the corner, is attached to the other marker stitch, the first of the 3 you skipped in making the first arc (dotted line in diagram). When you go to “sc in 2 skipped sts” you’ll only sc once (dashed line in diagram), again into the slip stitch that ended round 2. The second sc is the one you made at the very beginning of the first arc. Now you can sl st to that sc, and proceed as instructed with round 4.

I was pleased to realize that although my last arc ended in front of the first arc, because of the backtracking I didn’t have to cut my yarn between rounds 3 and 4 – I was already in the back where I needed to be.

closeup of mysteryghan border closeup of mysteryghan border

I took a break between skeins to secure the yarn tails, so I have to figure out how to photograph the whole thing, wash it, do the final trimming, and get the on-bed glamour shots. Until next time!

Adding to the mystery

We’ve reached the next installment of the mystery afghan series. After the joining was done I checked the size. Big enough for our queen size bed? The answer was almost but not quite, and I had the solution on deck: a Greek Key patterned throw from Red Heart. I originally thought I’d do this in black and dark purple, but realized that would detract from the stained glass effect of the black joins. Since I had the most dark purple and dark gray leftover (albeit not quite enough gray, as it turned out), I did it in those colors and joined it with black.

Greek key pattern panels for the sides of an afghan

Instead of a long foundation chain followed by a row of single crochet, I made 213 foundation single crochets to start. Otherwise I followed the pattern, save fixing one typo: In row 9, just before “repeat from * across” it says to dc 3 rows down and skip the next sc. In between those two instructions it should have you chain 2 (in place of the sc you’re skipping).

The pattern calls for you to chain 2 whenever you’re skipping 1 stitch. If I were starting over I would only chain 1. It’s likely the designer’s chains are tighter than mine and a single one puckered unattractively, but in my tension the two chains spread and make the key pattern serif instead of sans-serif, so to speak.

I made the second panel twice. The first time I joined all my leftover gray and still ran out with one long row left. Instead of continuing from that point with new gray yarn and a dozen tails to deal with, I decided to pull it out, and when I got back to the beginning purple I realized I’d joined that in the second row as well! Must have cut out a knot or frayed area. Anyway at that point it seemed worthwhile to start completely over. Once I got the new skein of gray I realized why I’d run out: it wasn’t enough for the panel! Barely – I ran out with maybe 10 stitches left – but man, that’s a yarn eater. I pulled back to the start of the row so the tails would be at the edge and used some of the previous leftovers to finish. Unfortunately the new skein was a vastly different dyelot than the previous, but in the not terribly bright light of the bedroom, hanging off the edge of the bed, it should be fine.

yarn left over from afghan making

Since I’m down to just the border, here’s my leftover non-black yarn (plus all the ball bands, minus one small ball of light gray which hid in the bag). This is the remainder from 5 dark gray (Red Heart Classic Nickel), 3 light gray (RHC Silver), 5 light purple (RH With Love Lilac, double-sized skeins), and 4 dark purple (RHWL Violet, ditto). The pattern called for 3, 2, 9, and 7 single-size skeins of each color, respectively, so I used less than one additional skein of each color (not counting the extra gray for the extra panels).

In fact, if I’d omitted the extra panels and done the joins and border in two different colors, I believe I could have squeezed them out of the remaining yarn as well. That’s rather amazing because my afghan came out a third again the size predicted – the squares that said they would be 9″ came out 12″ – and I did not buy a third again the called-for yarn. My work must have much more extra air space than extra yarn.

I’ve begun the border but it is slow. I’ve now been working on this afghan fairly steadily for nearly seven months, though, so what’s another one or two?