On Sunday, I Went Crazy

Before I get started on the insanity, here's a wee bit of progress - I got another color done on 'Great Light'.

Before:

After:

I have already started the next color.  There are either nine or ten to go.

On Sunday, I took the invitation, from my Mum, to go shopping at Wal-Mart.  This is, as I've said before, an hour-long trip (each way, so two hours driving, total) and we don't go that often because of that.  We wait until the trip is worth it.

Well, we both needed some groceries that the little Mom-and-Pop stores around here didn't have, and I wanted yarn and she wanted herbs and vitamins, so away we went.

There's also a discount store called 'Roses' near there, and we stopped in because they usually have well-made but cheap shoes.  I got a cute little red pair, and a couple t-shirts, then found something they never had there before.

A bin of yarn.

Red Heart yarn, not the regular kind but the odd kind.  These came home with  me, with some vague ideas about cowls:

At Wal-Mart, I dithered in the yarn aisle for a while - they were sold out of half the Red Heart, which was annoying, as I needed more of the 'Latte' color for the 'Tree of Love' afghan I want to start and they didn't have any. :C  Just my luck!   But I wanted to try and pick the color or colors for my big version of Rings of Change.

Mum asked what was taking so long, so I told her I still hadn't decided if I wanted to do it a solid color or if I wanted to do one in ocean-colors.  She looked at my tentative selections and said something I truly wasn't expecting from my no-nonsense, frugal mother.

What she said resulted in us going to yet another store - Magic Mart (is that a chain anywhere away from here?  There are about four of them that I know of but not sure about elsewhere?)  They have a dinky selection of Red Heart there, and I was able to get a little more yarn.  Enough for this:

That's about half what I need for my striped Rings of Change - Aran, Buff, Macaw and Turqua, bought at Wal-Mart, and two skeins of Blue at Magic Mart 'cause it was sold out at Wal-Mart.

And then this:

Four more skeins of Turqua, but not for my striped version because... my MUM thinks I should do both!  A solid and a striped one!  And it was very, very easy to talk me into it, haha!  As in, she didn't have to talk at all, I said 'okay!' and tossed the yarn into the buggy.

So then I dithered over which to start first, and the advice I got was 'Just do them both at the same time'.

O_o

Right, then!

One solid color Rings of Change, started (up to row 8)

And one striped Rings of Change, also to row 8, and through the first color sequence:

I'm going to be sick and tired of Turqua in about a week, I bet.

After talking about nothing but afghans for half the trip home, I had to pull out a stashed project and make a decision.  The reason I was waffling between a solid Rings and a striped one is because I've wanted to do a big, solid, bright colored afghan for my living room for a while now.  This is where my trip to Insanity went completely sideways into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.

With this:

'This' is a lovely afghan I wanted to make all in one color - it is not Turqua but is the old Red Heart Lt Teal.  When I started it, I calculated the yardage wrong.  The issue is that I would need 16 more ounces than what I have - and that color is discontinued. Despite haunting eBay. etsy and various crochet message boards for over a year, I haven't managed to get what I need.  So a few months ago I ordered some Aruba Sea, which is a close but not quite match and thought I would do it in stripes - one skein of Lt Teal, then Aruba Sea, then Lt Teal again and so on until it was done.

This is Aruba Sea, the Lt Teal, and Turqua in a row, so you can see the difference.

Aruba Sea almost matches.  So very close.  And yet if I did the last two or three skeins with it, the change would have been glaringly obvious.

But then, I dithered.  I do that a lot.  Over if I should keep going in the Lt Teal and just hope for the best - that I would find some more of my yarn before I needed it, or go ahead with the stripes.  I just wanted that solid color afghan so much and yet I wasn't willing to order more Aruba Sea and let all that Lt Teal wait for another, smaller afghan. (Because I'm nuts, I guess.  But the Aruba Sea didn't appeal to me the same way the Lt Teal did; not for a solid afghan.)

After Sunday, and the fact that there will be a solid-color afghan in my living room, I decided the stripes are good enough and probably will be very pretty.  But that adds another big blue afghan to my list.  It will look like this when done:

Only, you know, teal-blue.

If that isn't enough for you, I'm also trying to finish this:

That's the January square for the Moogly afghan, and once I get this done, may I never do another quadruple treble in all my life!  Also I dislike the Jacob's Ladder.  The sideways rows, at least.  Oh, how hard it was to make that first one look neat!  I cheated with the instructions 'cause I hated the way it came out at first.  I'd be further along if I hadn't had to pull the row I'm on out twice - after getting halfway through the second quadruple-treble row that comes after it.  I just can't seem to count this row properly!

If you notice, it's in blues.  I decided to do it as a stash-buster, but all in colors you would find in the ocean; blues and blue-greens and blue-purples and some teal and dark teal... and... and some bits of flotsam and jetsam here and there. The squares will be 12 inches each, and I'm going to add other squares to make a good-sized throw.

So that's four big blue afghans.  In progress.

My favorite color, by the way, is green.  I've definitely gone round the bend... because I don't feel the slightest bit dismayed by all this.  Every time I look at the piles of blue yarn in my house, I get a little giddy - with utter delight.  I've lost it!

PS: All of these afghans will be done with the same size hook, so I also bought the first of these:

A nice ergonomic hook so maybe my arm won't fall off!