Wow, I make a lot of blankets! Yes, I know I've said it before, and to be honest I'll probably say it again. For example, I still have the disastrous rainbow ripple blanket to finish, or my small spotty blanket. Also the Star Wars intarsia blanket I haven't touched since I last blogged about it two years ago, or the two C2C blankets for my nieces. I'd also quit like to make a blanket for my grandma one day very soon (tm). But this post isn't about any of those however. This post is about a blanket that I was posting about two years, and one that I actually finished. This post is about my Square-a-day blanket.
About three years ago I had the fantastic idea that I could easily create a blanket with very little effort. All I had to do was to create one square every day for a year. I even had a great starting point - Crochet to Go by Ellen Gormley, a book that I had previously picked up in the Range, though is easily available on Amazon.
Unfortunately, as with any "resolution" to do things on a daily basis (I haven't kept my promise to go to the gym regularly for about 4 years, for example) I often faltered in my goal and it took much longer than a year to complete the requisite number of squares. And as much as I had promised myself to do every square out of the Crochet to Go book, I regularly browsed the internet looking for....well....more interesting squares. Using as many scrap ends as possible, the patterns I used in the end are as follows:
Square patterns from Ellen Gormley's "Crochet to Go!" book, published by D&C:
- Puddles Gather Rain
- Eyelets
- Oscar Square
- Cherry Cordial
- Pick a Posie
- Team Captain
- Star Power
Patterns found online:
- Manghan linen stitch square by Dedri at Look At What I Made
- Sweetest Baby Blanket found on Moogly blog
Other patterns:
- Standard granny square
- Solid Granny square
- Circle in a square pattern (improvised!)
In the end I had to do slightly more than a years worth of squares, as 365 squares don't really make an even rectangle, so there were 374 squares in total Still fewer squares than my sock weight My Little Pony blanket though, which had 493! I finished crocheting the squares in August of 2016 (wow, that was forever ago!) and it took me a whole month to join them all together in a simple SC join!
For the border, I had some wonderful hand-dyed rainbow yarn from Arwen Makes. (She has an etsy store, though we conducted my custom order through her Facebook page). The yarn was wonderfully soft, and exactly to my specifications. I had two skeins dyed and caked up, and they edged the blanket wonderfully, and I still have one whole gradient left over (about half of a cake) which I intend to use to edge the Spotty blanket I'll probably never finish!!
I didn't want the border design to detract too much from the rainbow gradient, so I opted for a simple scalloped edge. I did consider adding little picots to the top of the scallops, but it really did look too busy so I scrapped it pretty early on.
The end result was a wonderfully large blanket which managed to cover most of my (UK) double bed. It's incredibly warm and - unlike my Truly Hooked blanket - it has held up well in the face of repeated washing over the last two years. There has been a small amount of fading in the hand dyed border, but very little colour bleeding into the surrounding yarns. It has also been peed on by the resident Hellbeasts, and so I'v put the lack of colour bleeding down to the fact that the cream edging yarn was not natural merino as in the TH blanket, but cream Wilko acrylic. Cheap and cheerful!
It is so nice to be able to take a nice, relaxed approach to my crochet for a while. Over the past few days I've been able to get so much stuff organised at home, and still be able to pick up my crochet at my leisure, in my own pace. I'm enjoying it!
I am finally up to date on my Square-a-day blanket. From now on - as the name suggests - I need only do one square each day to keep on top of it. My square for July also comes from Ellen Gormley's book - "Crochet to Go!" This square is called 'Cherry Cordial', presumably because of the colour of the sample square.
This isn't my favourite square out of the book. I'm not entirely sure why. I enjoy the clusters around the edge, because they give the square a nice, soft squishy feel. But the actual look of the square is quite similar to the one I did previously (Oscar) and like Oscar, it has lots of large holes in it. I was originally planning on this blanket being a year-long project - 12 months at around 30 squares per month. After dropping it last year and picking it up again this year, I decided to add 12 months of squares to the original 4 months that I had already done. That's looking at around 480 squares, so the blanket is going to be pretty big to begin with. Now I am thinking that I might do repeat months of some of the solid squares - like the manghan square, or the solid granny square - to offset the sheer number of squares that have holes in them. I don't know if I will definitely do this, it's just a thought in the back of my mind.
Now that I am up to date with this project, my next plan is to get up to date on my TH club blanket. I have two packs of wonderfully squishable yarn waiting for me, and I believe the current dispatch date for the next pack is July 10th. That will make 3 packs left to do - literally one THIRD of the total blanket. At least it won't take me long!
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!
I found my phone! Well, technically hubby found my phone, in the clean laundry I hadn't folded yet. Maybe if I'd actually folded the laundry instead of crocheting, I might have found it myself! But no matter...
This means that I can share photos of my squares! Whoot!
As I mentioned in previous posts, the square for March was a simple circle-within-a-square design. I created the circle using 20 (US) double crochets, and then created the border also using double crochets. They worked up pretty quickly. This is the same pattern that I am using to create the mini blanket using the scraps from my Truly Hooked yarn club.
My squares are limited in size, because the first designs I used came from a book, and all of the designs in the book were 11 stitches square. As such, I have been trying to keep my latest squares as close to that as possible, which has meant that occasionally I need to modify the designs a little. April's design was a smaller version of the Sweetest Baby Blanket on Moogly. To make it smaller I simply restricted the squares to three rounds and three colours each.
May is a new month, and as such I don't have many squares done yet! I am up to date with the 'square a day' concept, and so I am only doing a single square a day. This month I am using the Manghan square from Look At What I Made. My squares are a little looser than the ones in the tutorial, as I am mostly using DK weight yarn with a 6mm hook, to keep the same size and tension as my previous squares. I don't think the squares loose too much from this though, and it means that if I use some of my thicker yarns later on there is room for tightening up. Currently all of these 'Manghan' squares are single colours to use up ends of balls, but I don't plan on all of them being monotone. I would like to have some variety!
As always, all of my squares are unblocked because I'm a naughty crocheter! I simply don't have the cat-free space, or the time. Or actually, even the space - cat-free or not.....
It's been a while since I last updated here. There are two reasons for that - The first is that I was at first too busy with sewing the Bad Moon Rising shirts to do much crafting of any sort.
After I finished 81 shirts last week and sent them off, I was able to spend some time crocheting. I caught up on my 'Square-a-day' blanket - I finished all of the remaining squares for March, which were the two tone squares with the circle in the middle. Then I crocheted like crazy to complete the squares for April, before April ended! I chose to use this Sweetest Baby Blanket pattern from Moogly, cutting it short at three rounds to make the squares the same size as what I had already done. And I actually succeeded in finishing all 30 squares before April ended. I was rather pleased with this.
Now, you might notice that this is not actually my picture.... This is the second reason why I haven't updated in a while. When I came to take a photograph of the squares design I was using, I realised that I had lost my phone. My phone is my lifeline, and while I probably should invest in a proper camera, I do in fact use my phone for all of my photography. It has been almost a week now since I realised it was missing, and I still have not found it. As soon as I do I will, of course, post up to date photographs of my projects. But in the meantime text will have to do, and I really did not want to resort to that. I was hoping to find my phone before I posted...
For May's square, I am using the linen stitch Manghan square, from Look At What I Made. My squares have thus far been single colours, but I have a lot of ends to use up and this would be an excellent means to do that.
Again, not my photo.... *sad face*
In between my daily squares, I am working on my sister's wedding blanket. I have since decided that I want to do two blankets - His and Hers, as you will. However, I have less than two months to complete the two blankets, and I am only about 6/16 through the first one. And like a plonker I agreed to sew more Bad Moon shirts! This is the last batch though. I'm not going to take any more after these. I feel like I am losing control of my other deadlines! I clearly am not as good at multitasking as I thought I was...
It won't be long before I get the fourth package from my TH blanket club, either....
Now.....Where has that phone got to.....
Still no lobster clasps today! I'm beginning to think my mail man is holding out on me...
In the absence of lobster clasps, and being a bit burned out on my sister's blanket, I turned my attention to one of my long-suffering WIPs today. This is, or will be, my Square-a-day blanket, and it had very humble beginnings:
It started out on New Years Day, last year. The idea was to use my left over yarn from other projects, and to just do one small square a day. By the end of the year, I would have a pretty big blanket. Or so the theory went. I started off well, and for the first four or so months I religiously crocheted a square every day. And then life interfered a bit, and I ended up putting it down to focus on other things.... Well, other things being sorted, I was able to pick it up again on New Years Day this year, and have thus far - touch wood - not missed a day.
The plan is to do a different design for each month, so that the blanket is a sampler of different designs in all different colours. I will be joining them together in a simple double crochet stitch, and then edging in white. I have a specially hand dyed rainbow gradient to put a final border on it, when it's finally finished. I'm even being very good and weaving my ends in as I go....for once... :D
This month's design is a simple circle-in-a-square design:
I haven't decided yet whether I want to stop at 12 designs, as was the original plan, or whether I want to continue until the end of the year. The original plan would have somewhere around 365 squares (give or take - I might have to do more to make a full rectangle) whereas if I continue it would be closer to 480. I imagine it will depend on how many designs I can find that work in an 11 by 11 stitch square. The blanket is already looking pretty big though, and I'm only in the 7th month!
To make it worse, I am constantly browsing the web for more designs and patterns. At this rate, it will never actually be finished!
