It seems odd to be writing about something as cozy as an afghan with temperatures here in northern New Jersey hovering in the 80s and 90s, but anyway . . .

My mother found this afghan in a thrift shop and gave it to me because of my fondness for granny squares. I don’t know if it’s really from the 1970s, but the color scheme certainly brings that era to mind. The browns and greens so popular then were a holdover from the 1960s back-to-nature vibe–or a reaction against some of the psychedelic color schemes of the previous decade? And since it had been 20 years since the 1950s, turquoise and peach had cycled back into favor.

I lived through the 1970s and I recall being drawn to homey arts and crafts, and music like bluegrass, which seemed comforting perhaps–given what was going on in the world at large (not that things are any calmer at the moment). I also recall making several granny-square projects, but nothing as ambitious as an afghan.

When my husband and I bought our house in 1979, the living room was painted avocado green and the dining room was harvest gold. We were horrified and reacted by painting everything white–never mind that several decades later our living room walls are peach!

Here are close-ups of some of the squares, which are much larger than the ones that make up the afghans I’ve featured in other blog posts. Granny squares can actually go on and on. You could make a whole afghan that was one giant granny square since they’re constructed from the center outward.

Here we have orange and rust and two shades of green–plus harvest gold.

Here’s another one . . . green and more harvest gold, and peach in the center.

And another one . . . a different shade of brown, and tan, and peach and turquoise!

Not sure what happened here–multicolored ombre yarn perhaps? No other squares are like this.

I like the design of this afghan too. The stripe livens things up.

Here’s a fun website that shows lots of typical 1970s color schemes.