Have I got a great pattern to use up all those yarn balls you have stored up in your stash bins for so long!
The pattern is from Lion Brand yarns and it's called Lion Country Afghan and it's found here...
http://cache.lionbrand.com/cgi-bin/patternFinder.fcgi?search=Search&searchText=free+knitted+afghan+patternsThe title sounds deceiving because a 'country afghan' could mean it's a sort of folk art or country scenery type afghan instead of the country of the United States of America.
Anyway, it says it's a knitting pattern but since it's in a graph form you can just use the graph to crochet it in the tunisian/afghan style pattern instead.
This took me about a month to make. I used up a lot of my left-over yarns from previous afghans I'd made.
I did have to buy more skeins for the background - it takes about six skeins of Red Heart Super Saver for that. Also I ran out of yellow in the middle of Texas and had to get another skein of I Love This Yarn. (You can see there's a slight color variation even though it's the same yarn color.) I thought I Love This Yarn was a no dye lot type of yarn but it's definitely different.
In fact, even the background yarn in Red Heart was changed. I used Royal Blue starting on the east coast and ordered the yarn through the mail. When I got it and started it you can see the yarn color difference.
Oh well. It's a sort of patchwork-looking afghan anyway with all the different colors used in the states.
When I reached the Four Corners states part on the graph, I noticed that they didn't meet exactly and so I made sure it was correct for my afghan. (You might want to look out for that if you make one of these and that matters to you too).
My finished afghan, (using a size J cabled afghan hook), is 65 inches high by 81 inches across. For the border I did six rows of the basketweave stitch alternating red and white left-over yarns so the colors vary slightly. I figured since the background was the royal blue that red and white stripes would look nice as the border.
I also made purple borders around Alaska and Hawaii to indicate that those are just insets and the states really don't belong there, (even though that's fairly obvious to folks).
I had a hard time fitting this all into one photo shot and had to get my sons to come and hold it up for me. Sorry it's not laid out nice and flat.
Here's a shot of the back of the afghan too. It's nice and neat.
This project was so much fun and I really enjoyed making it!
