Hence, the Name

Here is the craptastic, crapalicious, craparrific crapghan. If you put on sunglasses, you might be able to look at this picture closely enough to see that I'm just beginning to apply the border. Warning: Viewer beware! I won't pay your medical bills if your corneas are burned.

This is a Red Heart afghan for my oldest nephew, The Teenager Who Drives. He's military-mad and his bedroom is decorated in American flags, video game boxes, dirty clothes, and White Sox paraphernalia. So, when it came time to make his special blanket in grandma's "single" pattern, we picked out this insane variegated yarn named, appropriately, Stars and Stripes. I hate the yarn -- there are too many imperfections, too many variations in spin and thickness and loft and color -- which gave rise to the nickname. Crap + afghan = crapghan.

My grandmother crocheted bed-sized blankets for all of us -- her kids, their kids, and in some cases, their kids. In 30 or so years of crocheting, I'd be willing to bet she made 150 of them. When she ran out of beds to blanket, she started making enormous "throws" (actually, also twin bed-sized) for the backs of couches. She also made a good number of crib blankets, but she preferred the bigger ones because they would take her longer than ten minutes.

If you were reading the blog this spring, you know I pulled out her special "double" pattern to make a crib blanket for my uncle and his wife, who had their first baby this July. That double pattern and the single pattern I'm using for the crapghan were the only two patterns she ever used to make afghans. No granny squares for her! She taught me the patterns one day sitting at a picnic table in her backyard, under an enormous old oak that we all referred to as "the shady tree." Many of my happiest memories developed under the shady tree, and that's certainly one of them.

I get wicked nostalgia whenever I think about this, and making the blankets is a way of honoring her memory. The crapghan is number 3 of 5 for the nieces and nephews. Number four will be a forest green one for Danger Boy, but I'll finish a sweater or two before I cast that on.

And it looks like this one will be done in time to pass it off to the teenager at a family gathering on Sunday. Whew!