I have finished the Janet Martin Aran block. It took 19 hours in total and I didn't have to frog a single stitch!! I am so thrilled. I think when it is blocked it will fit just fine alongside the Hanna Burns and the Ann Strong.
When I was about half way through, I started thinking "why isn't this HARD?" It is rated as one of the five hard squares. And if you've read any of my posts on the three squares I've done already, you'd know I have openly discussed how hard I've found this project. So if I found it hard when I was doing the easy squares, then why didn't this one completely flip me out? I have a theory that this one was easy for me because I just followed the written instructions. The book provides both charted and written instructions and in the first two squares I tried to use a mixture of both sets of instructions - sometimes reading the codes, sometimes glancing at the chart.This time around I also kept a pretty tight record of where I was at, ticking off each row as I went.
Aside from feeling a bit clever trousers with this project....imagine me hands on hips channelling Mr Bean...I rather like Janet Martin's design story as well. Initially she thought of cable jumpers being knitted for fishermen and then thought of what fishermen did and lo and behold a fish caught in a net....or as my daughter said: a fish swimming in the waves. I've been to Galway but did not travel out to the islands. From my experiences of Ireland, I think those fishermen must have been very tough. If you want to see a little of the old and new Aran blended together, this is a pretty interesting site.
Previous posts
GAAA - Jay Campbell block (October 2011)
Great American Aran Afghan (September 2011)