Hello all,

You are a crocheter. Your hubby and kids are familiar with your idiosyncrasies as a crocheter. They also know what a crochet pattern looks like. One fine day, your child, hubby or friend fell in love with an afghan pattern and asks you to crochet it. It's all lovely and great until you realize that the pattern in question will in reality be an afghan much smaller than what is needed.

What do you do? Tell the person that it cannot be done and you'll make another one? Well, there is a way you can still make the afghan without breaking hearts. It just needs a bit of imagination and creativity. Instead of dropping the idea of making the afghan see if you can crochet smart and combine the pattern with real life requirements.

Read through the pattern instructions and look at its photograph to determine the kind of afghan it is. A simple granny square afghan simplifies your task. All you have to do is make more granny squares and join them together to get the required size.

Some afghan patterns are made by repeatedly joining the basic two or more blocks, just like it is in quilting. Two such afghan patterns are:

http://crochet.about.com/library/weekly/aa060300.htm
and http://megan.cc/RosesBlanket

Other afghans may first require you to make a specific number of panels of the same pattern. In patterns like these, you can simply crochet the required number of basic motifs or panels and join them lengthwise or width-wise as per your needs. Finally, follow the pattern for borders and fringes.

Adding more stitches and crocheting additional rows can increase the size of afghan patterns consisting of ripples, stripes and repeated rows of one or two stitches. An example of such an afghan is:

http://www.coatsandclark.com/Crafts/Crochet/Projects/AfghansThrows/LT1531+Crochet%20Ripple%20Baby%20Blanket.htm.

At times, the pattern may show asymmetric designs such as those of animals, flowers, sun, moon, stars and vehicles on a basic background. Some of these designs may be crocheted. But, instead of you crocheting the designs, just crochet the afghan background and cross-stitch the design on the finished product. Visit http://www.craftyarncouncil.com/projects/animals.html for a cute baby zoo afghan done in a similar way.

May be the afghan you need to crochet is something like

http://www.bevscountrycottage.com/cccbear.html

where you need to change colors to make the design. If you have access to the pattern graph, like in the example, try copying the design to a larger graph. When doing so, just double up the number of squares dedicated to a specific color or part of the design. For instance, if four squares represent nose as in this example, use eight squares in the larger graph. Complete the graph and see how it looks. In most cases, if you take care of all the proportions and count the squares correctly, you should be getting an afghan twice the size of the original pattern.

At other times, adding a broad border or fringe on all four sides or just the top and bottom can do the trick. An amazing collection of borders and fringes ranging from easy, dainty to real fancy is available online. Hurry and take your pick.

Ciao.