the granny square sampler afghan is complete!

Back in April I had finished the center part of this afghan and had decided to go around the edges with blocks that weren't necessarily original to the "Granny Square Sampler Afghan" pattern from Better Homes and Gardens Crocheting and Knitting since they were starting to become repeats of the same squares. I put this project on hold to participate in A Square A Day In May since the big squares we were making for that crochet along took up most of my time. I couldn't stand to let this afghan languish any longer and crocheted the rest together today.

I may add another round or two around the edges, and I will probably add a pretty border. Maybe even one from this book that I bought almost exactly a year ago (the second it was published) but haven't really used just yet. And I have about a billion ends to weave in. But I just couldn't wait to show it off!

Making this afghan has taught me so much! The original pattern is super vague about putting it all together, and if you made each square exactly as the patterns are written, it would never have fit together perfectly. While I still don't think my resulting afghan is perfect, I think it all fits together quite nicely. I'm especially proud of the method I devised for fitting all of the different sized blocks together as evenly as possible. I had hoped to have a tutorial ready already for this method by now, but I've been sick all week and had to put it off. It should be ready by tomorrow! I've had the pictures ready for it since April!

I used only yarn from my stash for this blanket. The filler stripes were a great way to use up pretty small balls of leftover yarn. Because of the total lack of planning of any kind of color scheme, I wasn't sure if I'd love it, but now that I'm done I realize that I really do!

Here are some in progress photos:





**update: I finally finished my tutorial on how I joined this afghan! Find it here.**