Monday, December 10, 2012

Project: Spinning Wheel Cube Afghan

 We asked our friend Michele, the speediest crocheter we know, if she wanted to make a "model" from one of the patterns in our stores. She picked a pattern from the 1930's - the Spinning Wheel Cube Afghan. It turns out that women in the 1930's crocheted a lot more than they do now and patterns relied on that innate knowledge gleaned when crocheting so much when they put the instructions together. These days, patterns contain a lot more detail. In fact, watching Michele right now, describing how much longer the pattern would be had it been written recently, is pretty entertaining.

So this is a picture from the pattern.

Spinning Wheel Cube Afghan

And, here is a picture of a single block from the afghan. It has taken the speedy crocheter (and mathematical genius) several attempts to convert the instructions to modern crocheting. We will be posting changes made to the pattern, and modern interpretations of the pattern over the next couple of weeks as she finishes the afghan. All of the changes will be added to the pattern.


The first change made was the yarn type. The pattern calls for Minerva Shetland Floss - a discontinued yarn. The Shetland Floss was a tiny yarn that was worked with a size 12 steel crochet hook. Michele decided that making 124 - 132 diamonds for the pattern would be too time consuming and not much fun.

The yarn Michele chose is Caron Simply Soft. Simply Soft is a light worsted weight yarn that works up easily and is really soft. The hook size she went with is a size 7. It was one size smaller than the yarn calls for because we thought it would make the diamonds a little more stable.

Using Simply Soft yarn made the finished diminished approximately 7 1/2" x 7 1/2".

More project updates will be posted - keep an eye out for them.


Spinning Wheel Cube Afghan listing on Etsy

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