County Fair Afghan

For three years, I wanted to put a crocheted afghan in the county fair.  I wanted it to be beautiful, an afghan that I worked very hard at and that was challenging enough for me to feel like I really earned it.  One day, while browsing about the crochet books at Joann’s, I fell in love with this knitted afghan: 

Now to be honest, I am a very novice knitter – I can knit and purl, but am no where near the level of this afghan (it’s on my to-learn list!  Someday!), but the pattern kept creeping back into my mind, so I went back a few weeks later and bought the book (Herrschener’s More Blue Ribbon Afghans).  Since I had the book, I thought I would browse through and try out some of the crochet patterns as well.  I must have been so overwhelmed by the knitted throw that I had not realized how beautiful some of the crocheted ones were.  And right then, I decided that I’d crochet one of them and submit it to the county fair.  So I headed back to Joann’s; bought some yarn and started on the first pattern in the book.  (And yes, this is also the same book that features the Eve’s Coverlet pattern that I made for the carrots swap last year; this pattern is called Tropical Delight )

 That was three years ago.  Each January, I pick up the project again and think to myself: I’d really like to have this finished by this year’s county fair.  And each year I start to panic right around the June mark (the fair is in August) and think: oh no! I’m running out of time! and end up putting the whole thing aside with thoughts of how I’ll finish it over the winter and be ready come the next fair.  Ha.  Well, here it is, June again, and I have a whole bunch of centers finished and am nowhere near putting the whole thing together, much less make the complicated border.  So here I go again, starting to frantically whip up squares and counting down the days, trying to figure if I have enough time to finish these up.  

So I’m posting this here in hopes that having it out there will help motivate me to finish this up and get it into the fair in time.  Here’s my Ravelry project page, which I’ll keep updated with my progress.  Give me your encouragement, because I have a long way to go!

~Mellie ★