I had learned how to crochet at an early age, from one of my aunts. She only knew two stitches and only crocheted with cotton thread, and a small steel hook. She also only made one item…a potholder that looked pretty and was serviceable, but after making a few, they began to be boring. No challenge. I was totally hooked on crochet (pun is totally intended lol). Not wanting to hurt my aunt’s feelings, in my spare time at home, I would sit down with magazines about crocheting (no YouTube in those days), and learned how to make many more stitches. I figured out that the basic theme of crocheting was just a matter of drawing a loop through a loop. Before I knew it, I was making intricate doilies and rather large ones at that. Through the years, I yearned to learn more. I began to work with yarn and the beginning of my journey I seemed to be on was now officially moving forward.
Jumping ahead many years, I was looking for a pattern to make an afghan for one of my brothers. Always looking for a challenge, I came across this afghan and fell in love with it. I thought, “I can’t make this for him, he might think it is too girly.” So I chose another afghan as a backup See the pic of the blue afghan. When I asked him if he would prefer something with multiple colors or with different shades of blue, I was so surprised at his response. He said, “Most people think my favorite color is blue because my eyes are blue, but I hate the color blue!” Well! I had my answer and for the next 6 months I had quite an experience making this afghan. What I didn’t know starting off is that in order to make an afghan using the afghan stitch (which is a tightly woven stitch) with colors changing every 10 to 12 stitches, you have to drop the yarn and pick up the next color as you move across each row. For this pattern, that meant at all times I had to have at least 12 working skeins of yarn attached all the way through this very large afghan. Can’t tell you how many times I wanted to quit. But I knew there was not much time left and I had to keep going. You see, my brother had been diagnosed with a debilitating disease that was not curable. My brother was dying and as the months wore on, it was clear to see his health was declining more rapidly.
I finished this afghan in September of 2004. My brother absolutely loved the colors and the heart seemed much more meaningful now that he was in awe of the work that had been put into this. Did I mention earlier that I had a cat sitting on my lap the majority of the time I spent crocheting this? Remember, there were 12 full skeins of yarn that had to move every time I had to turn the whole afghan for a new row. God! I loved that cat!! He never touched one strand of that yarn. My brother, knowing I owned a cat, even remarked on the fact there wasn’t a shredded piece of yarn in the whole piece. Sadly, my brother passed away in November of the same year. While I have this picture, have been complimented many times on the work, and asked a couple of times to maybe make another one, I have never tried. The work/challenge of this particular piece will forever stay as a tribute to him.