This afghan certainly does live up to its name. It positively flew off the hook! Great for a last-minute shower gift, as this was. I got a shower invitation for someone that I didn’t even know was pregnant, so I had no time to plan. And she doesn’t want to know the gender, so I think that the colors will work. All in all, I loved making this. It was very portable, and the pattern was easy to memorize. Quite a pleasure.

I did find some errors in the pattern:
On Row 2 of the strip (which is the row that is repeated for the whole thing), it should read: (3 dc, ch 2, 3 dc), rather than (2 dc, ch 2, 3 dc), as stated in the pattern.

On Round 3 of the Outer Border, right after the asterisk, it should read: *skip next dc, dc in next dc, … Then after the repeat of 28 times, just before the bracketed instruction to skip next dc, … , I needed to skip next dc, so in effect I was skipping 2 dc at this point, right at the transition from the side edge. I needed these extra skips to get the pattern to work out evenly and to have the dips of the chevrons be properly stacked.

There were several other minor errors as well, but for the most part they were easy to notice and correct, much easier than it would be to explain them here, so I’ve noted just the most important ones above.

I ran out of yarn from the kit, and needed to buy an extra ball of each, but this was my own fault. My gauge was WAY off. I had some kind of a brain blip, because I measured the gauge on the first strip, and somehow thought I was spot on. Then when I did the second strip, it came out WAY shorter than the first, but thinking that the first had been spot on, I ripped out the 2nd one and redid it looser. I then bordered both of the first 2 strips, and when the 3rd one was coming out really small again, I re-checked the gauge and discovered my error. I was getting only 6 shells to 5” rather than the 8 that I was supposed to get. I don’t know what I was thinking, how I could have been so far off and thought that it was correct, but I had already cut the yarn and bordered the first 2 strips, so I just continued on, but I had to work very consciously loosely in order to match my beginning gauge for the rest of the strips. Weird, because I normally tend to crochet rather tightly. I don’t know how the first strip came out so loose. The resulting blanket is rather larger than your standard baby blanket, but oh well.

I had assumed that since the Prism yarn is acrylic, that it would be machine washable, but to my horror the label says to hand wash & dry flat. This was rather upsetting, as I didn’t want to give a blanket to a new mother that would require such care. I never really heard of an acrylic that wasn’t machine washable and dryable, so I decided to test it out before giving it to her. I put the finished blanket in a large mesh laundry bag and sent it through the wash, gentle cycle, then took it out of the bag and dried it on low. It came out just fine. Yay! So that put my mind to rest about giving it to her. And the colors didn’t run at all either, which was another concern. I’m going to give her a mesh bag with it, so that she can handle it the same way.

I think if I were to make this again, I might choose a different yarn from the Prism. The colors are great, but it’s extremely thin at points, almost like thread. Seems rather fragile for a baby item. The Mellowspun is very soft and lovely. I’d definitely use that yarn again.