you'll never guess...

I’m making an afghan! And yes, it is for a very special person – my son Derek. I helped him last year to renovate his living room. It’s quite modern and sleek looking. He has this grey leather sofa bed that doesn’t exactly say comfy, cozy, and I thought he could use an afghan to soften it up. He has always liked alpaca and I have a bunch of left over cones of Forsell’s Naturell in shades from black, through grey, beige and ivory with peach thrown in as an accent – he already has a couple of pillows in cream and peach-ish shades. My original idea was to do a sort of log-cabin quilt motif using tuck stitches and had made a swatch where I rehung each piece/next colour the opposite way, so the knit side/purl side added texture. When he saw it, he liked the colours and textures but thought it would look too folk-art for his desired aesthetic! I said I would work on the design. Dodged a bullet there as it was extremely labour intensive!  
To be honest, I started this back late last fall and was hoping to get it done as a Christmas present, but it was easy to put off. Now, getting back home without a real to-do list, I figured I’d tackle this now and get it done (remember my new year resolution about procrastination?).
I did make several swatches before but somehow lost the paper that I recorded the info on so, although washed and pre-shrunk, they are somewhat invalid but I was experimenting with tuck patterns that would give me texture, extra width and bulk up this thin yarn, so I had a row of plain with maybe 3 tuck rows – now it all made sense – if I double the length of that 4 stitch X 4 row pattern, there will be lots of texture and 2 rows of stockinette that I like the look of and I can use that as my division between colour changes. My pattern is set up so it begins and ends with one row of stockinette – I am turning the work between colour changes so the clean row of stockinette at the end allows for a plain row to use the garter bar to pick it off easily. After the turn, I am using the next row to fix in the tails on either end by ewrapping them so I don’t have to go back and darn in later, just trim them. And, I don't have to be continually re-reading the pattern - it is working continuously!
Oh yeah, I also weighed my cone before and after knitting the 180 sts width by 56 rows so I know I need 20g for each stripe.
 Seven shades, seven stripes. Cast off. Hang the side selvedge and repeat. This is definitely long enough – I’ll make at least one more panel the same and attach it the opposite way…