Jan Metzger, owner of Jan’s Village Yarn in Fallbrook, CA, published the instructions of how she had copied (circa 1981) knitted afghans she had seen at high-end department stores where she resided. A more detailed description of how she named the project is archived here:

http://www.woolworks.org/misc/hdstory.txt

She posted the pattern on a Prodigy bulletin board in 1992. Most of the original text of the posting was archived in a 1996 email from “DLevs” at WoolWorks.org

Jan modestly made no mention of this pattern on her store’s website, which no longer exists.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of afghans have been knit from this pattern.