Crocheted Blackberry Salad Striped Afghan

I have done a number of crochet projects over the past couple years.  The majority of them have been prayer shawls and baby blankets.  I haven't made anything for myself so I decided to make an afghan for cuddling on the couch with.  I had made a couple of baby blankets with a beautiful pattern a friend sent me called: Blackberry Salad Striped Baby Blanket so I decided I wanted to make an afghan with this pattern.  I was happy to find that she also had a link to a Blackberry Salad Striped Afghan she had posted; saved me trying to figure out dimensions.  What I love about this pattern is that I used all the left over yarn that went into all the projects I had made over the past couple years.  Not only did I use up left over yarn, I made an afghan of memories, so to speak.  Crocheting is more then a mere pass time for me.  The projects I work on for people are specific to them and I often use the time to pray for them while I work away.  

I love the way this blanket turned out!  I used yarn randomly. It doesn't really follow any particular pattern. 

View of the afghan spread out.

 A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a couple of moms while waiting for my kids at Nature Class.  One of them shared that she was writing down the story of how each significant Christmas ornament came to hang on their tree.  I happened to be working on this blanket at the time and we talked about how if we don't share the stories of how things came to be the story is lost!  One of my friends suggested that I keep a common place notebook about my crochet projects as I had shared why this project was significant to me.  I thought that was a wonderful idea!  So I bought a common place notebook and decided to go back over the projects I had done and write them down.  I enjoy writing so this idea had great appeal to me. 

This was a bigger project so I was happy to have it done but it was worth every stitch! :)

My 'memory' afghan and common place notebook.

Afghan all folded up!