Crochet Project: Striped Shells Blanket

Late last spring my Mom surprised me with a big bunch of yarn she found at a yard sale for $1 - 10 skeins of rainbow colored "Earthglow Ombre" Caron Dazzleaire vintage yarn. I decided it would be great for this Alternating V Shell Afghan pattern, so I began work on it last June. However, after much frustration I almost gave up on this project entirely.

It is a nice, easy pattern, that works up quickly, and makes a very pretty blanket. The problem I had with this blanket was the yarn I used. My first skein of yarn unexpectedly made a fun striped color pattern as I worked, which I really liked. This stripey pattern naturally continued with the next skein and the next. but then I started noticing little differences in each new skein of yarn I added to the project. Unfortunately, even though all of the skeins of this yarn were labeled as being from the same dye lot there were quite noticeable color/pattern variations in some skeins (some had no orange, others had no green, some had almost no orange AND no green, and some had a lot longer color changes than others too) which made the striped pattern look messy from skein to skein since the colors weren't always the same.

After frogging and reworking the entire blanket once because it looked bad; making some adjustments to my yarn (leaving out some skeins that were missing colors); reworking the whole thing again and still eventually running into basically the same problem of the colors not matching well from skein to skein, the project hibernated for about 8 months while I worked on other, usually less frustrating things.

Then today, while I was sorting through my yarn looking for something suitable for a couple of new patterns I want to try to crochet, I came across this shell afghan project again. After examining it, I finally decided to just rip out the last section of stitches made with the worst of the ill-matched skeins and live with the rest of the yarn imperfections so I could finally finish off this project.

The finished blanket measures 42 inches by 50 inches, so it's a good lap/chair sized afghan. I'm still not very happy with it though. The blanket itself is very soft and warm.... Maybe I’m just too picky about the yarn not all being the same colors.