Otters love to crochet...AFGHANS!

I went through a brief love-affair with quilts, but (even though I love fabric and color and patterns) they're too finicky and precise for me.

After I learned to crochet, I was looking everywhere for ideas, and in a very bad movie (Nanny McPhee) I saw a crocheted afghan on one of the children's beds that was so beautiful that I actually rented the movie to get another look at it. It was granny squares, but in nice colors and in a random pattern like a crazy quilt, rather than in day-glo 70s colors as granny squares always were in my youth.

And that started me thinking about how many quilts are made with squares, and how well suited granny squares are to that kind of design. And after looking around online, I found this double Irish chain pattern.

The nice thing is that it's made of two kinds of squares: one with 21 colored squares and four white, and the other of 21 white and four colored.

So I decided to make it with tiny granny squares, making the center nine squares of the white pieces all one granny square, and to use a rainbow of colors rather than just two.

I got a WHOLE LOT of Sugar 'n' Cream yarn by Lily, in every color that wasn't too bright, and also some of the mixed "ombre" colors. For the white parts, I got ecru, since I am skeptical of any useful household item that's white. Either it's never used or it won't stay white.

After doing a sample, I found that 25 granny squares sewn together measured 18 x 18 inches, so I decided to make 16 of the large squares, 8 multicolored and 8 white, and then do three more rows of the granny square stitch around them to tie them together.

With this yarn, a skein of regular, one-color yard made 11 or 12 squares, and the 'ombre' (variegated) yarn skeins, which were shorter, made 8 or 9. Then I crocheted 400 granny squares...and now am putting them together. So here's the outline of how I did it:

Decide how big you want the thing to be, what colors, and what kind of yarn.
Make a sample granny square (how to make a granny square) and measure its size. You can make it bigger or smaller by adding or subtracting rows, although I think you need at least three rows for it to look like a granny square.
Put the squares together in groups of 25. The squares that are mostly color have the white granny squares in the center of the sides; the squares that are mostly white have the colored granny squares at the corners. You can put them together any way that suits you; I'm whipstitching mine, jsut seems to work better. And I'm using the ecru to do it, even though the stitches show on the dark squares.
When you have all your squares of 25 done, put them together for the main body of the afghan.
Do as many rows as you like of the same granny stitch around the whole outside of the afghan to make an edging.