The finished blanket

It just occurred to me that I'd never put a picture up of the finished blanket. Honestly, I'm as pleased with this project as with any project I've ever done. It just came out so nicely. I wish the pictures had come out better, but this is the best one I could get. In person, the colors are brighter, darker and more saturated.

As you can see, I used Attic24's join as you go method of joining the squares together. It's just so much neater looking than any other method I tried and it's actually a lot easier than you think it will be. I highly recommend her tutorials in crochet. They're so clearly explained and photographed. I hope some day, someone asks her to write a book on crochet, because honestly her tutorials are better than any book I've found thus far.

Then I finished it off with six rows of granny triplets all the way round and a final row of shell stitch. I'm not sure I did it "right". It works, but since I figured it out by looking at the shell stitch on a vintage afghan I bought on eBay, who knows if it's the "official" way to have done it. Doesn't bother me too much. I'm a knitting heretic and often don't do things the "right" way in knitting (the way I do my perls makes most knitters go "what the hell are you doing?!). So why should crochet be any different, right?

Anyway, I have to say, I started this crochet thing most because I wanted a way to make a biggish baby blanket for my sister's new baby boy in a really short amount of time. And it was fast. Way faster than a similarly sized blanket would be if I knit it. But boy, has this become it's own kind of addiction. In the time since I finished the blanket, I've also crocheted the front for a throw pillow, no pictures as yet and 1/3 of another afghan, this time bigger and for myself. And I can't see myself stopping any time soon.