Réalta means ‘stars’ in Irish Gaelic, the pattern is so-called because my little brother said it reminded him of a constellation of crazy stars!

This pattern is available for sale on Ravelry. The pattern includes:

• a written pattern with lots of color photos for each of the three motifs

• a ’Quick Print’ black and white version with a stitch diagram of the main motif (octagon) for your WIP bag!

• instructions/suggestions for assembly

• my colour chart for the original afghan, plus a blank black-and-white template to plan your own colours.

• NB: this pattern uses American English terms but crocheters in the UK/Ireland/other parts of the world can email me at the address given at pattern purchase for a copy in British terms :-)

In addition, you can download the Dutch Tiles Variation for free. Once you have mastered the main motifs in the Realta Afghan, you can adapt it to your own taste.

Re. yardage and yarn amounts:

I deliberately shied away from adding that because I knew that 95% of the people buying it would be from the US/Canada and would use WW yarns. The actual afghan is done in the yarn we have available over here in Germany, which is a whole class lighter than WW, so the weights and yardages are entirely different.

Some rough math:
I used 13 main colours + black. I didn’t use more than 150g of any colour (yarn is sold in 50g skeins, the max. amount I used is 3 skeins in any colour), some colours I used more of and some colours I used less of (I used much less yellow, for example, than green. I love green and mixed it with a lot of the blues and teals.) I needed more black - probably about 200g in total. However, our yarn is thinner, so the yardage/weight ratio is different to the US yarns.

A standard skein of American WW yarn is 167g. This means that 1 skein per colour + 2 skeins of black should cover much of the creation of this afghan. When I check other afghans to compare amounts of yarn used, 15 skeins of yarn seems about average. Now, if I were buying yarn for this afghan, I would probably buy an extra skein of the colours I tend to favour because subconsciously you will find yourself reaching for those colours more often than others.
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8th April 2011: Interested in making your own rainbow Realta? View this page for a quick colour tutorial - the few guidelines I set myself when making mine :-)