I found the book!

I mentioned last week that I was looking for a pattern book with a specific baby afghan. Someone at the Shawl Ministry had purchased two finished afghans at a thrift shop, and wanted to know if someone could reproduce the afghans. One was a granny square with a large, open "cabbage rose". I was able to create the rose with some playing around, and it would be easy enough to attach some white and create a granny square with the rose in the center. The second pattern had a 3-D flower created with double crochets, and the petals did a twist and stood up. I played and swatched, but couldn't re-create the stand up petals. I spend most of a day searching on line. For some reason, I thought the pattern was a Maggie Weldon design, but couldn't find it on her website. I searched eBay, spent hours on searches that read "40 baby afghans", etc. I finally found a picture of the afghan, and the seller listed most of the afghan names, but not the title of the book.

Last night at Michaels, I spent time flipping through books of afghans, baby projects, etc. I'd start with scanning the table of contents (if the book had one) looking for names on the list, then flipping through the book. A friend helped with selecting about 4 afghan books and bringing them to the classroom. We had a good time looking at afghans & discussing what we liked, colors, etc. I finally found it! It's "The Best of Maggie Weldon Crochet Afghans". A friend loaned me a 40% off coupon (I just asked with a please, please, please voice, I didn't beg. But I think that I would have!) I have the same coupon here at home, so I've dropped it into my project bag, and I'll give it to her at the CGOA meeting tomorrow.

I had about 5 skeins of various colors in my bag, I had planned on swatching during the evening. I made a flower with RH periwinkle, it was cute, but very stiff. I tried again with an orchid, softer, but not what I want for a baby. I think I'll try RH Soft or Caron Simply Soft, or maybe a baby pompadour yarn with a little sparkle in it.

There are some beautiful afghans in this book, many with flowers. There's another baby afghan that's a large granny square in white, then white roses and just a touch of color with green leaves. What a great baby gift! There are plenty more with flowers, more granny squares, afghans made with strips and motifs, mile a minute types, ripples and pineapples. My favorite, along with this 3-D flowers baby afghan, is a granny square done in green with large yellow & white daisies. It's so fresh and crisp, and spring-like!

There are plenty of extras in this book, including a list of abbreviations, yarn standard guide with gauge and suggested hook sizes, US and International terms chart, a chart of hook sizes in US (letters and numbers) and metric, a chart on how they label patterns (beginner, easy, intermediate, experienced), information on achieving gauge, joining, and finishing techniques.

I'm going to highly recommend this pattern book. Check it out at "Maggie's site"