It's a Jungle Out There! - Animals Afghan

This afghan was so hard for me. Following all the complicated and abbreviated pattern instructions was crazy! The stitches use mainly Front Post Double Crochet and Single Crochet stitches, (in the back loop only).

I bought the kit to make it from Mary Maxim's. The pattern is in Leisure Arts booklet called A Year of Baby Afghans and this was the afghan for August. The yarn is Mary Maxim's Starlet in medium blue.

The bright sunshine makes this look a lot lighter blue than it really is.
This was actually fun to make, (despite it being so difficult for me).
I like how it never tells you what animals you were working on. You only had the photo in the pattern book to go by and so you just hoped that you were doing it right. The animals slowly begin to emerge from your stitches and it's pretty neat!

One animal I thought was a baby elephant, I decided must really be a bear. No long trunk. That one in the bottom and top center. But who knows.

It's bigger than I expected too.

Mary Maxim had put into the kit a sheet they printed out suggesting that you begin the project with a smaller H hook and gradually use an I hook and then finally a J hook so I did that. It's to prevent what they called "tenting" in the middle. I guess that's like bunching up like puffy tents. So anyway, beware if you tackle this afghan too. You might want to do the same with switching out the hook sizes gradually.