My first afghan

I made my very first afghan ever as a gift for my sweetie for Valentine's Day. The pattern is from Lion Brand and can be downloaded for free from their site. It is the Vanna's Choice Squared Afghan. I did make some changes to the pattern, however. I used the Vanna's Choice yarn in brick, taupe, beige and linen and added a fifth color, black. However, I only used the black as a border for each completed square and then in the border around the completed afghan. The original pattern is in shades of gold, green, purple and rose, but since this afghan was for a man, I thought I needed a more masculine color scheme.


The pattern was easy to stitch and it took me about a week, but I was putting in quite a bit of time on it to get it out by Valentine's Day. I ordered the yarn so I could get the colors, but it took longer to get here than I had anticipated. I was working on it every evening and put in one full day on a weekend, late into the night, to get it finished. It makes a nice lap afghan, but if I make this pattern again, I will add another row of squares to make it longer. It comes out about 4 ft. x 4 ft., but that is not quite long enough to cover the adults in my family from toe to chin for good snuggling.