In addition to Mom’s shawl, my brother’s wedding necessitated another special occasion project. One especially for my brother and his new wife. It needed to be classy and timeless, in a neutral to integrate into the decor of their new house.
I have turned time and again to the crochet afghan patterns in Afghans for All Seasons (book 1), and this time I knew just the one I would use for this project. It has stripes of different textured bands, kind of like a fisherman’s knit sweater, but is crochet from one edge to the other instead of assembled strips. I had this pattern in mind for them from the moment they announced their engagement.
Then I procrastinated. Other projects came up, other deadlines. I had plenty of time after all.
I finally pulled out the pattern to look at it again. I had visited it several years before and had crochet a few rows, then dropped it in favor of another. There was even a penciled note: 1 row = 30 minutes. Yikes! That’s at least 116 hours, plus whatever edging was necessary. This project needed a rigid plan if I was going to pull it off. I only had about 12 weeks to complete it.
Enter the handy dandy spreadsheet. How often can you find 30 minutes in a day to work outside of work? Then add up all of those half hours over the course of a week or month and see how close you get to 116 hours. Yes folks, a spreadsheet was necessary. To get this done in time for gifting I needed to complete an average of 24 rows/12 hours per week. That estimate gave me the week off for the family vacation at the lake and plenty of time with Son during his visit too. It also meant that I couldn’t touch any other project the entire time. Not my ideal conditions.
But all of that planning payed off. I finished in plenty of time for their wedding, and it turned out exactly as I wanted. Another project for the Win pile.
