Hand-me-down Granny Squares

I love granny square blankets, but they are harder to make than you realize. I forget how hard they are, and end up making another, only to remember why I don't like to do them. However, these squares are special to me, because my Grandma Joyce started them.

She had a few more that 56 little pink squares made up. I found them in a plastic bag along with skeins of white yarn. I have a wonderful friend, Suzanne who is having a baby girl any day, and told me green was in her color scheme.

So, I took my grandma's squares and added some light mint green yarn, also from my inheritance... however, they just weren't big enough to make a decent size baby blanket. My mom, Paula, was a firm believer in big baby blankets. She thought they should be able to last a while. I always think of her when I'm making blankets, because I made so many with her.

I went back and found the white yarn that my Grandma Joyce had originally planned to use, and I finished up the squares. They were just the right size. Normally, I would make a blanket out of even number of squares, something else my mom would do, but I was satisfied with the size, so I left it 7 squares by 8 squares.




I prefer to crochet my blankets together, instead of sewing. There are less strings to hide, one of the biggest reasons granny square blankets are so hard for me, because there are so many strings...EVERY WHERE!

I chose a simple border. That's what I usually did when mom made blankets. She made the blanket, and I finished with the border, usually something more difficult than I'd rather do, but she knew what she wanted, and knew I could do it, even when I didn't. I did a simple chained border with picots on the outside row. Nothing too frilly, because the blanket was pretty enough with out it... if I say so myself.

I was very pleased with the outcome, even more so, because I remembered to take a picture before I gave it

away!

Hand-me-down yarn

I am working on several projects at the moment, something I am notorious for... this one however, I believe is going to be rather fun... at least for me.

When my Grandma Joyce passed, my mother and her sister found oodles of yarn, some with projects in the works but most of it matted up together. It was a joke that they should go through all of that yarn, just in case grandma hid the family jewels inside. Then after a while they decided that grandma had hawked the family jewels in order to buy all the yarn.

My mother inherited most of it, and kept it along with all of her own bundles of yarn and unfinished projects. When my mom passed away...well, I was the next in line. One of these days I'll build up the courage to take a picture of my dining room/office/yarn explosion and post it here.

So here is my mission: To find strange and out of the ordinary (at least for me) projects to finish up using all of my hand-me-down yarn so I can go and buy new yarn without feeling guilty about all the piles my husband and kids have to wade through already.

My current project is a afghan made from only Red Heart yarn (I have a bunch of that). I'm using a very simple shell pattern of 1 SC + 1 DC in same stitch, skip next stitch, and repeat all the way across. It's fast and easy and very pretty.

I'm only doing 4 rows at a time, and my goal is to see how many different colors I can use before having to repeat. I'm on my 9th color, and I have at least 4 more that I know of before I have to go digging for more or repeat with my fabulously outrageous red.