Woodland Creatures Afghan

First block on this afghan is done. This took a lot longer than it should have.

First, I started working on it, and thought that maybe the instructions were wrong, since a lot of the stitches are only one strand (over 2 on 18 count, so 9 count), and didn't seem to have any coverage. Plus, there were no finishing instructions for the back, which seemed odd. I asked on reddit if anyone had done any of these afghans before, and didn't really get much of a response, so I decided to try the first block, see how it looked, and then switch to a framed piece on 18 count if the coverage looked horrible.

Then, I get halfway through the orange part of the background (not the spots), and realize that I miscounted when centering it in the block: 88 holes in the block, so 44 stitches over two, the block is 38 stitches wide, and I left a border on the left and top of 6 stitches instead of 3.

So, I restart. I do a bunch of the first line, then count the rest to make sure that my borders are the same... and they're not (at least I've only the bottom legs of the first 17 stitches this time). Triple check my counting (in 2 for the rounded corner, 17 orange, 6 yellow, 10 orange, 2 blanks for the rounded corner) and I can't figure out where I went wrong... except if you noticed above I said that the block was 38 stitches wide... but 2+17+6+10+2=37. So I needed 3.5 stitches (7 holes) on each side of the block, not 6.

So I undo the stitches and start again, moving right one hole to start. Get those first 17 stitches done again... and realize that the height would also be 37 instead of 38 stitches as well (and I checked the pattern to be sure). So undo those stitches once again, and move down one hole to start.

Triple checking all my counts the entire time, I end up centering it properly this time. Yay! I finish the background, then start on yellow-green for the turtle's head and feet. I almost finish that colour... and realize that that symbol was only supposed to use one strand of floss instead of two (I shouldn't have assumed that all the backgrounds were 1 strand and animals were 2). So after undoing all the turtle skin and redoing it... the rest of the block went without incident. Even the French knots went oddly well.

Anyway, I was worried that the lack of coverage would make this not look very good, but it actually turned out looking okay. So I'll be gifting the afghan for Christmas after all.

I actually saw the companion piece for this at Michael's the other day, and I'm not sure if I want to go back and pick it up or not. That striped background looks kind of fun though. Maybe I'll ask someone else if they want to pick it up and I'll stitch it and then they can gift it.