My Past Years Afghan

Though we've never met, and she is unaware of how much she's helped me to develop my crochet skills, Lucy over at Attic24 is a crafting guru to me, and she recently came to my rescue once again. I've just come out of the Christmas Crochet Rush, and finished two or three other small projects, which always leaves me with a dozen tiny balls of leftover yarn colors and bewilderment about what to do with them. So, when I spotted Lucy's "Solid Granny Square" pattern on a recent tour around her blog, inspiration arrived, and I began working up those myriad colors into what I call My Past Years Afghan.

While a lot of the odds and ends that are currently becoming mini-squares are from recent triumphs, some of them date from two or three years ago; as any crocheter can tell you, it's so hard to part with the small leftovers that are just long enough to "make into something," though you rarely figure out what. It's been a blast from crocheting past to create my little squares, and when I have enough of them to piece together, they will truly be a Crazy Quilt, as my mother always called her hodge-podge stash-busters, but it's fun to watch them take shape. Each block springs to life so quickly--barely 15 minutes required for each, once you get into a rhythm of making them. In future years, I anticipate that there will always be a Past Years Afghan brewing in the background of my other projects.