Northern New Jersey is experiencing a polar vortex at the moment, too cold to even venture outside, and cozy is very much a desideratum. This granny-square afghan is too small to provide total coziness, but its cheerful pastel colors look ahead to spring in an appealing way.

You can see a wonderful assortment of colors, lovely pinks, yellows, greens, blues, and lavenders, with just a few darker tones mixed in. Adding to the pastel effect is the fact that, unlike many–even most–granny-square afghans, it doesn’t feature dark borders around the separate granny squares. The different colors flow into one another with minimal interruption.

The granny squares are also very small–barely even “squares” at all. Each measures only two inches across, and the afghan is 30 inches by 34 inches, with a total of 143 squares.

One of the most appealing aspects of granny-square projects to me is that they are often clearly the result of a frugal crocheter using up odds and ends of yarn left from other projects. In this afghan, I counted 13 pink squares–but they weren’t all the same shade of pink. Two different pink projects lent their leftovers to this enterprise.

There are two different shades of olive green too, two squares of each.

I also counted six dark-green squares, 16 seafoam-green squares, and three variegated light-green squares.

The crocheter even used up some bits of ombre yarn. There are four like this . . .

. . . and there’s one like this.

The crocheted edge is a dark olive green.

Here’s the back–quite a contrast with the front. (Actually rather messy.)

The afghan’s creator could have used a much less conspicuous color to join the squares, but perhaps she wanted a tiny dark edge to show on the front and mark the squares off from one another.

Stay warm, wherever you may be!