Catching up, and BoB

I did not realise that I was so far behind on my Square-a-day blanket. Wow! Last time I was up to date was some time in May, and the last time I mentioned it in a blog post I had finished about 18/31 of the squares for May. But that particular post was earlier this month......in July..... And I obviously hadn't touched the blanket in a while at that point, because I had been focusing on my sister's Persian Tiles. Ooops!

At that point, I was busy working my way through a small pile of Manghan squares, the pattern for which I found on the same website as the Sophie's Garden crochet-a-long, Look At What I Made. I love these squares. They are so simple to make, and they work up really fast. The actual stitch is very squishable, and if you were making a blanket for really tiny babies, I would definitely recommend this pattern as a starting point because there are far fewer holes for little fingers to get caught in than say, a traditional granny square. I have to say that when I next make blankets for the maternity ward, I will definitely be using this pattern for the preemie babies. Thanks to the simplicity of this design, I was able to catch up on these squares very quickly, and swiftly moved onto my next month - June.

I took June's pattern from the book that first started this project: Crochet to Go! by Ellen Gormley.



Ellen was the designer of the Sunny Spread pattern (founds on the Red Heart website, here) that I am using for my Truly Hooked blanket club yarn. This is actually a complete coincidence. I chose the Sunny spread design for the same reason I chose this book from the craft store I was browsing in - the designs are small, quick to work up and easy to learn.

I eventually plan on working up all of the square designs from this book as I would like at least 16 different designs incorporated into the blanket, more if I can manage it! So for this month I am doing the Oscar square:



I am currently standing at 21/30 squares for June, and so I am very close to being up to date. Like all of the designs in the books, they work up very fast - the most time consuming part is changing colours! There is a lot of blue and green in this months batch of squares, as I am trying to use up balls of yarn to get them out of my drawers. I have so many odds and ends that I can't really use for any project of a reasonable size, so the only thing I can really do is use them for a patchwork project such as this one.

That said, I even have lengths of yarn that are too short to incorporate into one of Ellen's 11 by 11 stitch squares. But will I throw them away? Never!! I am a hoarder of the worst kind! That is where BoB comes in. BoB is my Ball of Bits. Whenever I have a length of yarn that I can't do anything with - and this may vary from anything from a couple of inches to a couple of feet in length - I simply tie it onto the end of BoB.



The idea is that I will eventually have this wonderful ball of many colours that I can crochet a blanket for Greebo with. Greebo absolutely loves synthetic fabrics, whether it is my dressing gown, the throw on the bed, or my current WiP. He just loves to settle down on it, and knead it with his claws. So I would like to make him a blanket of his very own, and what better yarn to use than my left over scraps? Of course, many of the scraps are incredibly short, and I won't add anything that I believe I can use for something else, so BoB is growing rather slowly.... Poor Greebo will have to wait a while for that blanket!