GAAA--Judy Sumner Square, Part 1

I started on the Judy Sumner square for The Great American Aran Afghan. When I was reading what others had written about this square on Ravelry and in blogs, I discovered that some really, really did not like the spider on this square and had decided not to use the square in their afghan at all or else had decided to leave the spider out or substitute something else, like a flower.

While I can totally relate to not liking spiders, I decided to knit the square as written because my admiration for Judy Sumner's imaginative design apparently is greater than my loathing of spiders. I think the 3-D aspect of the square with not only the spider, but the other bugs and the leafy vines is a marvel.

For this afghan, the book only gives one gauge for the whole afghan as kind of a guide instead of a gauge for each individual square. When I swatched for that gauge, I ended up with size 6 needles, so that's what I'm using here.