Martin Storey's Mystery Afghan: It's Finally Finished!. . .

After five months, eighty squares, an endless cable trim, a crochet border around each square and then another row of crochet to seam each square together, and what seemed like thousands of ends to weave in. . . 

. . . and here finally is my finished afghan in all its wonky glory. 

The wool is almost 95% British starting with two variegated yarns from Jillybeans as the inspiration, and then trying to pick out complimentary colours from my stash, mostly using Titus, and Alpaca yarns from John Arbon,  all of which are lovely to knit with. I think there's a bit of Rowan 4ply wool in there too.  Since several of Martin Storey's square designs used texture as a key element (which didn't show up in the variegated yarns), I tweaked most squares by using colour to make the pattern pop and cobbled a few square designs of my own from stitch dictionaries. And as I was using 4ply, I had to knit almost double the squares; this has clearly been the biggest knitting project I've ever completed.

I wasn't sure at first if all the squares would go together but I am loving the final look despite my somewhat lopsided crochet  (I tried to block all the squares to the same size but there were slight variations).  And even though I was using 4ply, the blanket is surprisingly warm - perfect for cosy autumn nights watching movies on the couch.

So then I was quite chuffed about finishing and looking forward to tackling some other projects, but first I took some photos and went to post them on ravelry. And wouldn't you know, THIS was just announced:

It's Kaffe Fassett.  It's colourwork.  Resistance is futile.  Fortunately, there is an option to do a small or an oblong cushion as well as an afghan.  I will definitely do the cushion while cheering the afghan knitters from the sidelines.  Now the only question is - do I use more 4ply from my stash (yes, I still have tons).  Surely it couldn't take that long to do a cushion in 4ply. . .