The Havana Afghan is worked with the wonderful mosaic crochet technique and was featured in a CAL hosted by Pippin Crochet Club on Facebook, the fall of 2018. The pattern was available for free during the CAL and now it is available for purchase here.
You will find several video tutorials for this project on my youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCLETbuS9Y_v1o2BpSjj-oA?
This was the first pattern I ever wrote using the mosaic crochet technique, back in 2015. It was published in my third crochet pattern book, Havana Heklbók, in 2016.
The fact that this was my first mosaic crochet pattern makes it a very good introduction project to this technique for those of you who are trying it for the first time. It really is the most wonderfully fun technique to learn, and the best part is that while it looks quite complicated, it really isn’t!
I first came to know this technique through the lovely Apache Tears blanket, and when I started playing around with it, my Havana Afghan came to light. At the time I was living in Havana (like I am now) and I wanted to make a big piece inspired by this uniquely colorful and beautiful city. When walking the streets of Havana, it’s inevitable to be inspired by the multitude of patterns and colors that meet your eyes everywhere you look! As a Nordic, I am not used to this in my surroundings (we tend to be a bit more organized up there!) so what always astounds me is how all the different and mismatching tiles, colors and patterns then all come together and make a beautiful colorful whole. And that was the inspiration for my Havana Afghan, a lot of different colors and patterns, that then come together as a whole.
As a result, my afghan has 7 different mosaic patterns, which are all simple variations of the original Apache Tears. And as an homage to the original, that introduced me to this technique, it both starts and ends with the original Apache Tears pattern.
Size
The afghan is approximately 140 cm x 110 cm large, without the border, using the recommended yarn weight. Then add 8 cm on each side for the small border or 15 cm for the full border.
Note that it is very easy to make any size of blanket you want with this pattern, and\or change the type of yarn you use. The afghan is composed of 7 mosaic patterns and each pattern has the same repetition of 12 stitches and 12 rounds. Since the repetition is always 12 stitches, you can just cast on a multiple of 12, until you get the width you desire, and then add 3 stitches to that for your cast on. The repetition on the length is also 12 rows, so it´s easy to control that as well.
For a baby blanket version, I recommend finer yarn, fewer repetitions and the small border.
The border is also composed of 12 st repetitions, so as long as you keep in mind to work both the length and the width of the blanket with the 12 st \ 12 rows repetition rule, then the border will fit your blanket.
Yarn & hooks
you can use any yarn you like for this blanket, but I recommend worsted weight yarn that fits hook no. 5 mm, like the one I used for my Havana afghans.
For the size given here you will need approximately 400 m of worsted weight yarn for each of the 7 section, 200 m in color A and 200 m in color B. Total of 2.800 m for the blanket itself.
For the full double border add the following: 1.900 m in color A (main color) and 450 m in color B (accent color). For the small double border add the following: 1.000 m in color A and 200 m in color B.You will need crochet hook: no. 5 mm for the blanket and no. 4,5 for the border. If using other weight of yarn, use a hook that is compatible with the yarn you are using and a hook that is 0.5 mm smaller for the border.
For those of you who like kits, I designed three color kits for Havana with my friend Christine Triscote. They are available for purchase online, check them out here:
http://www.triscote.fr/prestashop/289-havana
General instructions
The blanket is all worked from the front side, from right to left, so at the end of each round you break off the yarn. Therefore, there are lots of ends, but no worries they will be hidden in the double border of the afghan, so you don´t have to weave them all in! The blanket is striped the whole way through and each round is worked with only one color at a time. Work one round in color A and then one round in color B, alternating with each round. I recommend always using contrasting colors for A and B, that way the patterns pop more.
Colorworks
This pattern really offers a great many color possibilities! The afghan has 7 different mosaic patterns so there are so many variations you can go with. In the original I used 2 colors for each pattern and then changed both colors with each new pattern, see photo of me and my husband by the sea here.
It also gives a beautiful result to work the afghan with one main color (A) and then alternate color B with each new pattern. Or even use up scraps for color B and let that one fade or change according to what you have at hand in your stash.
Finally, in my Big Multicolor Havana Afghan I worked it all with scraps and my stash, so I had to get a bit creative and that’s how I came up with the double color fade technique. There I started with color A as a dark navy blue and then just let it do a color fade into lighter blue, greenish blue etc., according to the colors I had in my stash basket. I started color B with a bright red and let that one fade into darker red, then purple etc., always bearing in mind that there was a good contrast between colors A and B at any given time.
If you want to use your stash for this project, I explain how to work the afghan with scraps using the double color fade technique in my YouTube video: Havana CAL – Introduction and color technique. See link to my YouTube canal below.
and finally, here are some Useful links
My YouTube Channel – where you will find video tutorials on the Mosaic Crochet technique we use here and how to read my moasic charts included in the pattern, as well as tutorials showing the doble color fade technique I used to work my big multicolored Havana scrap/stash buster Afghan
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCLETbuS9Y_v1o2BpSjj-oA
If you need any help with the pattern, please join us in my Facebook group, where me and my wonderful admin team will be happy to help you!:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TinnaCrochetClub
My artist Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/thorudottir/and finally my Instagram is @tinnahekl, if you want to heck out some of my other mosaic crochet projects!