Growing

Months ago, I purchased the pattern for the Babette afghan.  It was a pretty large undertaking considering that I hadn't tried an afghan at all yet.  The only other blanket I've crocheted to date is a small lap blanket.  I was initially drawn to the bright colors in the picture, but when I looked at other projects I found one that was done in black and white and fell in love with it.  So, after Christmas, I used up most of my Hobby Lobby gift cards buying yarn for it.  To be honest, I kind of wish I had gone a more colorful route.  At the time, the black and white scheme appealed to me, but I'm in a much more colorful mood now.  Maybe one day I'll do it in color, but it's too late to go back now.  And I really am considering doing it again one day- probably playing around with it a bit, but I have at least one other afghan I'm dying to try first.

I don't know how others have done it, but I knew if I tried to make up all the squares and then piece them together that I'd just end up with a mess of lost squares.  So I've been taking it in sections... completing just those squares, piecing them together and then adding it to the blanket.  The first few sections go really quickly.  Once I hit section 6, it just slowed down considerably.  And then I got caught up in holiday crafting and poor Babette was put to sleep for a while.

I took her out again yesterday and finished up section 7.  I noticed that as Babette is growing, I can see how my skills as a crocheter have grown also.  Not that it takes a lot of skill to make this blanket, but I'm better at keeping my tension consistent and my larger squares don't turn out quite so warped.  ;)  It will never be as gorgeous as the one in the picture, or even a lot of the projects I saw on Ravelry, but I don't expect it to be.  I've only been crocheting about a year, and still have much to learn and I've been having a ton of fun with it. 

Babette through section 7... 3 more to go plus border.