Ada's Crocheted Afghan

When I was a young wife and mother in 1971, I taught myself to crochet, by purchasing a poncho kit from Woolworth's. My knack for following the abbreviated directions, combined with a tight budget, turned me into a master of crochet. Each January, I would start crocheting Christmas presents to give to our extended family the following December. Vests, hats, toys, purses, afghans, dresses, rugs....you name it, I made it. I couldn't just sit still, without working on a project. I liked nothing better than finishing up the dinner dishes, and sitting down to crochet while I watched TV, or sat chatting with friends.Crocheting became part of my daily life. Although I’ve enjoyed many other crafts, from quilting to embroidery, from furniture refinishing to macramé, nothing has ever been as relaxing, satisfying or as portable as crochet. Once my kids grew older, I put my crafts away, and went to work full time. Too exhausted to work on anything after my busy days, I missed doing my projects, I had to focus my energy and creativity into building a career and raising three kids as single mother....and I succeeded!

Now, years later, I am an escapee from the rat race, a lady of leisure, happily re-married, and enjoying every moment, and my kids have become three wonderful, creative adults in their own right, This summer, I learned my pregnant daughter, Caitlin, was carrying a baby girl...and my first grandchild! She and her husband, Christopher, planned to name her Ada, after my own Nana, who passed away many

years ago. Ada Lowe Broley, and her husband, Sam, left their home, friends, family and jobs behind in England, in order to follow their only child, a British war bride, to America. Nana and Granddad raised my sisters and me, after our parents divorced, and my mother had to go to work .

If it wasn't for Ada and Sam, my life would have been lonely and sad. Nana shortened my hems, baked my favorite chocolate chips and sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" every night to help me fall asleep. I loved her with all my heart.

When I learned that a new Ada was about to enter my life, I dusted off my old crochet hooks. They'd been sadly forgotten in a closet for more than twenty years. I whipped up five sweater sets in the first month, each pattern re-educating my fingers a little more, reminding me of how much I'd missed the craft. I was "hooked". Since the colors of the yarn coincided with the colors of the new nursery, I decided to make the baby an afghan with the bits left over from the five layette sets. I spent all summer and fall working on the afghan, going back to the store, again and again, for more skeins, never knowing how much in total I would need. I searched the Internet for granny squares that appealed to me. Way back in the 20th Century, I would have gone to a yarn store, pouring through the books, looking for that single, definitive afghan pattern. But these are the 2010's, and my love of Internet research sent me into a cyberspace filled with hundreds of flowers, stars, angels, snowflakes, geometrics, alphabets, lace, and a Yin Yang symbol which has always been of personal importance to me. I even found my husband's favorite Key Lime Pie square to remind Ada of her Papa. The more I searched, the more excited I became by the process itself. I collected and printed a pile of patterns over six inches high.

In this picture, note the finished edging is a row of little green kitty cats to which I embroidered tiny pink noses! 


Kitty pattern:  http://www.allcrafts.net/f.php?url=www.bevscountrycottage.com/kitsinrow.html 

Yin Yang pattern: http://gwenevere.tripod.com/hope.html 

Key Lime Pie pattern: http://www.geocities.com/granniegroup/Pumpkin_Pie.html?1002303599800 

My daughter asked me to incorporate her childhood memory of a Holly Hobbie embroidered wall hanging I'd made for her bedroom long ago. It's amazing what you can find online. I searched and found a free pattern for a "Sunbonnet Sue's" sunbonnet, and I purchased an inexpensive vintage"Sunbonnet Sue" afghan pattern on ebay. We both agree she looks just like Caitlin's beloved Holly Hobbie girl. One of my favorite squares is this "puppet square". I made a little boy, with a red cap that has a capital "A" on it, and positioned him next to the Holly Hobbie square and two different angel squares. I imagine a future when my little Ada can't get to sleep. She'll snuggle her friends at the edge of the blanket and tell them all her secrets.

Puppet boy is a real puppet, with finger holes that work.  To view pattern go to: http://crochetpatternsonly.blogspot.com/2009/05/puppet-boy-in-blanket.html




Our whole family is animal crazy, so I had to incorporate kitties, birdies, doggies and a ladybug named "Ady-bug.

I thought Sammy the Cat would love the bluebird, but, of course, his favorite square seems to be the kitty.

From the beginning, I wanted to make a free-form, crazy quilt afghan. The real artistry of crochet is in the vision, the configuration and the construction of the final product. When the time came to piece my afghan together, I started by sorting the squares into major colors groups, setting them on chairs around a large table that had enough room to hold the entire afghan.

I created rows by blending and linking the colors as I went along. For example, I might start with with a green and white square, placing it next to one of green and another color, like green and red...next to that, a red and pink square, and next to that, a pink and blue one..and so on. This harmonious continuity avoided a clashing cacophony of ugly dissonance.

With such a variety of sizes, I needed to estimate lengths and widths of rows in my mind's eye. I placed the squares side by side, row after row, finding ways to make them all work together.  At first it seemed impossible to create symmetry where there was none. But, once I had the whole thing laid out, I enjoyed the beauty and the challenge of the imperfections. It took alot of trial and error, moving things here, swapping pieces there, until it started to make sense. I took groups of small squares and put them together into single larger squares or strips.  I crocheted around squares to increase sizes. I made little rows of shells or stripes, to fill in spaces, until everything was balanced and blocked. .


What started as a simple granny square afghan to use up my scraps, turned out to be the pièce de résistance of my crochet repertoire.

It took me almost me almost as long to make this afghan as it does to make a baby! And, although I think it is a pretty thing, there is something much more beautiful taking up my time these days!

Ada Lane Banwarth Born October 2, 2009 7 lbs. 12 oz. 21 inches long