Exchange Afghan

Well, better late than never! About ten years ago, I participated in two exchanges on the the Crochet Partners online group. I sent granny squares out to my exchange partners, and they, of course, sent squares back to me. One of the exchanges was just squares, the other was for squares with a floral theme. I enjoyed getting all the squares in the mail, put them in a box, and never did anything with them. This was about 1997-98, possibly later, but no later than 2000.

Fast forward ten years. The squares have moved with me, twice, including all the way from Maryland to my current home in Hawai'i. I wasn't able to keep the envelopes they came in, nor any notes they may have had, so I was left with just a box of anonymous squares! A few of them looked very familiar - I think I took the extra squares I made for each exchange and tossed them in with the ones I received. Which explains the three made of the same pink yarn!

I recently had a two-week break from work and was determined to finish up some long delayed projects. I made about 150 baby hats to totally use up my scraps, put together a pile of hexagons into the blanket they were meant to be, and unravelled several projects that were destined to never be finished - leaving me with nice balls of yarn to be turned into Project Linus blankets. And, finally, I crocheted my CP Exchange squares together into an enormous blanket! In the photos below, it covers my queen size bed.

I didn't attempt to arrange them - the arrangement is totally random. I merely tried to alternate floral with "plain" so all the flowers weren't bunched togehter.

All I did to join was use black worsted weight yarn and an H hook to crochet a simple joining of sc, ch 1. I had 157 squares, so I made 12 strips of 13 squares each, with one square left over. I then crocheted the strips together in the opposite direction, with a ch2 at the corner where each line crossed. The squares were all supposed to be six inches, but they were actually a wide variety of sizes, as well as a variety of weights, textures, and thicknesses. I couldn't begin to match stitches, so I just stretched here and eased there, and they all lined up surprisingly well! I was even able to use up the last of my black scraps!

I took these pictures before I washed it, but it came through a machine wash and dry very well - no ends popping out, no unraveling, just nice and soft and very heavy and warm - too warm for Hawai'i, but I don't have any place but my bed to store such a huge blanket! LOL!