Years and years ago, I fell in love with the Afghan Stitch - now more frequently called Tunisian Simple Stitch. I also knew of a yarn store that sold yarns by the pound. I never bought the fancy yarns, just the dollar-a-pound ones. They would buy factory leftovers of very fine coned yarns and wind them together to make approximations of sport, worsted, or bulky yarns for hand-knitters. No two balls were exactly the same mix of strands; that explains the different bands of colour in this blanket.

I have no idea in what year I began it, but I well remember when I finished it. My kids were with their father in Syria for a couple of months. I had two weeks of vacation in August 1983. My father’s youngest daughter was having her wedding shower during that time. So, I threw together a makeshift arrangement of bags on my bicycle, packed some dog food for my miniature poodle, left the water running for the cat and loads more cat chow than he could eat in two weeks and extra litter pans, and rode off from Montreal to Leominster, Massachusetts. Part of my sleeping-beside-the-road gear was this blanket as it was nearing completion.
After four days of cycling and discovering that road maps designed for motor vehicles leave out ALL topographical information, I phoned my father and told him that I was now ready for him to come get me. (He’d offered to come fetch me when I called him after my first night and just barely out of town!) I’d made it as far as Littleton, New Hampshire, and had had more than my fill of swooping down mountainsides and trudging up the next one in sweltering heat! Even the pooch was fed up with being put on the ground to walk uphill! She kept hopping on her hind legs plainly saying she’d rather ride in the basket than walk!!
On that drive home, and each day at my father’s, I worked on the blanket. I was hoping someone would like it. My stepmother surprised me; she liked it! I didn’t think it was something she would like. So, for the next few decades, it graced the couch where everyone sat.
After her death, neither of my sisters was interested in it, so I took it back home with me. But I’d been knitting and crocheting all those years and had far more blankets than I could use! So, when Ginette asked me to bring knits for her to photograph for my Ravelry project pages, I put it in the bag. When I saw that she liked it, I gave it to her. That’s better than it living in a box and never getting used anymore! I like that someone who also knits and crochets likes it. I had the fun of making it. I have the memories, and I have these photos; I don’t need to have it.

Because my first monster sized afghan stitch blanket has such curling at the corners, I did this one with a much thinner yarn and not too small a hook. It doesn’t either curl or bias as much as the more tightly worked one, but I don’t know if that’s because of the change of yarn thickness and hook size or because the yarn is unplied strands of very fine industrial garment yarns that have no ‘body’.