Sunday, March 8, 2015

The Four-Year Blanket





In April of 2011 I had the brilliant idea to crochet a 100% wool colorful granny square blanket. Four years later, it's finished! Like with many of my projects I didn't really grasp what I was getting myself into. 28 skeins of wool = six pounds of yarn = almost 2 miles of yarn = thousands of stitches = 540 color changes = over 600 ends.

I used Knitpicks Wool of the Andes (the colors are listed on my Ravelry page here) and only had to order more yarn once, for the border. The pattern is Summer Garden Granny Square, although I only did 3 color changes per round instead of 4. If I had done 4 you'd certainly be reading this post two years in the future. A huge part of this project was joining the squares together; I crocheted them together instead of sewing them, which ended up looking great, but taking for-freaking-ever.

So would I do it again? I'll give you the same answer I gave after I ran a half marathon 12 years ago - "I'm never doing that again." I'm not opposed to crocheting a blanket again, but not granny squares. Joining a billion of those things together killed my soul. But now I feel so freeeee! This thing has been hanging over my [crafting] head for years now, and now I have so much more time to knit all of the things.

Now, let me tell you about the 3 unfinished quilts in my basement, one of which is over 7 years old...


4 comments:

  1. It's beautiful! It was worth the effort.

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  2. Your commitment to the details is what makes your work outstanding (crocheting instead of sewing to join....). Last week I came across a quilt I started at CAVE more than ten years ago. I made good progress on it at BRCA. Then we went to BITH and had kids, and it hasn't seen a stitch since :). Someday!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks! I actually did finish the quilt from the quilting bee squares we made at CAVE when I lived in Delaware. The one I started after that, not so much. It's hard to squeeze in quilting with kids because it takes up so much room.

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