Wedding Roses Filet Crochet Afghan, pictures available 2+ years later....

So I'm sure a lot of you were puzzling over the "Lauren Knits and Crochets" in this title since there isn't a whole lot about crocheting. Here's some crocheting!! Yay!

Once upon a time in 2007, I briefly mentioned this project, which was a 30th Wedding Anniversary/Christmas Present for my parents. I did (as you might be able to figure out) finish the afghan a few days before Christmas, but since that was in the days before I had a digital camera that didn't require 4 AAA batteries and was a pain to load pictures with, I never photographed it. Even after we bought our digital camera, I just kept forgetting to take pictures or ask my parents to take pictures for me. So when I was writing my 2010 Knitting Resolutions, I added photographing this afghan to the list in hopes that I would inspire myself to go photograph it.

Lo and behold, that day was today! And there was much rejoicing!

Some projects specs before I show the photos:

I got this pattern out of the American School of Needlework's The Great Big Crochet Afghan Book that I bought when it was clearanced at Annie's Attic. In the book, the suggested yarn was Red Heart Super Saver and the suggested hook size was a 4.5 G hook. I started this project by doing only one square to see how it looked and see if I could get a rough idea of how the pattern went before chaining on the amount of stitches that the pattern required to make the afghan. For my "swatch" I used Walmart Mainstays (anyone remember that yarn????) in a beige and a size G Boye hook which I believe was 4.0 instead of 4.5. The pattern worked well with the yarn and color, but the product was a little to scratchy. I also did not have enough skeins of the Mainstays, and Walmart had discontinued Mainstays. After going to look at the other inexpensive acrylics and acrylic blends, I decided on the Caron Simply Soft because I really liked the Autumn Red. My parents have beige couches and an Oriental area rug that has a similar shade of red as the main color in it, so this was a pretty perfect match.

I began working on this in April 2007 with the Caron Simply Soft and a 4.0 Boye hook again, but I just felt like using a hook that small would end up with a very tightly gauged afghan. I switched to a Bates 4.5 G hook, frogged again because it wasn't working out, and then finally decided on a Bates H hook and it worked much better. I finished the first row of panels with the H hook.

I put the project away for the summer months as it is very difficult to work on an afghan when it's upwards of 85 degrees and humid all the time. :) I pulled it back out in fall, and worked on it a little bit at a time, but only got halfway done before December due to being distracted by other projects and shiny things (ha!). In December, I set out to finish the afghan. I also was not sure what to do with the border. So I brought it to my knitting group and asked if anyone had any suggestions as to what I should do. Pretty much we thought that maybe I could extend the natural border, but then I ended up doing nothing at all.

So I finally finished up the last row of panels and then single crocheted one more row at the top.

All done!