My "12 Year" Chevron Stitch Rainbow Afghan

This is a variation of the chevron stitch, notice it widens and shortens along the width, I tried to get a photo that showed the larger and smaller "v"s in the row and I'm not really sure I accomplished that. Sorry.

I began work on this afghan when my son was a toddler. I saw a photo of it somewhere and decided to make a bedspread for my son. He got the afghan (notice key word afghan, not bedspread!) from me for his birthday when he turned 16. It took twelve years to get this project to a point that was suitable for gift giving. It never got close to becoming a bedspread, here's why..

I purchased the beautiful but very expensive yarn at a local specialty yarn store that went out of business. The brand of yarn and colors were impossible to match exactly anywhere else, and I'd only purchased one ball of each color because I didn't have the hundreds of dollars the sales lady told me I would need to get all the yarn required for the bedspread. I figured I'd be back to get another set of the colors when I had the money for it. Well, that never happened because the store shut down unexpectedly before I got back to it.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to complete what I could, maybe I was discouraged, knowing it wouldn't be the bedspread I started it out to be. It is 60" wide, and the stripes in the rainbow run the width rather than the length of this which I didn't really like either. I put it up somewhere and didn't look at it again for years.

Now I'm glad I finished the afghan for my son. He loves it, says it keeps him warm when he's sitting at the computer. If it had been the huge bedspread I thought I was making for him he wouldn't really have been able to wrap it around while working on his fan fic or artwork and he'd be Freezing Boy instead of Happy Warm Boy.
Oops. I mean MAN (he's 27 now!).

Okay lesson learned:  Cyndi, if you're planning a project, get all the yarn you need for it at one time so this doesn't happen again!   Especially if you're making a sweater.  It was easy to turn this into an afghan but a sweater would be a bit more difficult to morph when you run out of yarn.  (Picturing my daughter running around in a sweater that is too short and has only one sleeve and half a collar.  She would be telling her friends "Mom made it for me, she told me it's a designer sweater that no one else in the world has one!"  (poor kid).