Today we are going to take your mostly-finished blanket and begin squaring-off the sides.

I’ll be honest. This is the part of the project that really excited me the most when Boring Office Guy and I were first exploring the idea of making him a hexagon blanket. Most of the googling I did turned up beautiful hex afghans, but nearly all of them had zig-zaggy top and bottom edges, and quite a few also had chunks missing out of the sides (although, this was less common).

Next week, I’ll show you what I came up with to straighten-up the zig-zags, but today we are going to concentrate on filling in those side chunks with half hexagons.

If you are following the same color scheme as I am, you will be making 4 blue half hexes and 4 brown half hexes.

The foundation ring and row 1

All of the motifs we have made so far have been worked in rounds. This one will be back and forth.

with light blue: ch4, join with sl st in 1st ch.

ch3 (counts as dc here and throughout), ch1, [dc into center, ch1] 6 times.

(7 dc, 6 ch – 13 sts total)

Row 2

Turn the work.

ch3, ch1, 2dc into ch1 sp, [2dc into next ch1 sp] 5 times.

(19 st)

Row 3

Turn the work.

ch3, ch1, 3dc into ch1 sp, [3dc into next ch1 sp] 5 times, ch1 dc into same ch1 sp.

Fasten off light blue.

(27 st)

Row 4

Connect medium blue.

ch3, ch1, 3dc in ch1 sp, ch1, * 3dc into next ch1 sp, ch1, [3dc, ch2, 3dc] into next ch1 sp, ch1 **. Repeat from * to ** 2 times.  3dc in next ch1 sp, ch1, dc in same ch1 sp.

Fasten off medium blue.

(41 st)

Row 5 (connecting row)

ch3, insert hook into corner space of rightmost brown hexagon and sl st.

Continue around the half hexagon as follows:

In each ch1 sp all the way around: 3dc, sl st in corresponding ch1 space of adjacent brown or green hexagon.

In first ch2 corner: 3dc , sl st in corner of right brown hexagon, sl st in corner of green hexagon, 3dc, sl st in next ch1 sp of green hexagon.

In second ch2 corner: 3dc , sl st in corner of green hexagon, sl st in corner of left brown hexagon, 3dc, sl st in next ch1 sp of brown hexagon.

End with a sl st in last corner of left brown hexagon.

Fasten off dark blue.

Once you’ve finished all of the half hexagons, your blanket should look like this. Pretty cool, eh? Please let me know if you have any questions about this.

We’re almost finished! Next week, I’ll show you how to deal with the zig-zaggy sides, the week after that we’ll do the border, and that will be it!

How are your blankets coming along? I’d love to see them.