You may have noticed if you're following me on Instagram, that I'm working on building up some stock for the Thorndon Fair in December. My goal is to try and use yarn only from my stash. I've got quite a haul of wool now, the 45 balls I won at Spotlight, and also a HUGE box of mixed yarns gifted to me from an old work colleague. I can't really justify buying new stuff when my yarn storage box is literally bursting at the seams! (Although I confess I did have to get extra white yarn to finish joining and the border!)
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| Giant stash yarns, not including yarns I bought myself! |
Since my Spotlight win, I haven't been able to get this golden yellow yarn out of my head. When I was a teenager, my favourite colours were yellow and blue, and I had a feature wall in my bedroom this exact colour! Something about it is so warm and cheery! Another of my favourite colour combos is yellow and grey. Digging around in my stash, I found these yarns and the idea for an Ombre-style granny blanket came about.
The original inspiration for a blanket was actually from this book:
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| Buy this book here |
I got it out from our local library, and it's
got some really lovely patterns in it. I was really struck by the design for this blanket, and thought it would be an easy project to do.
I didn't have the colours used in the book, but I liked the idea of solid squares with a plain border, along with a rainbow type colour scheme. I played around with the colours I did have, but couldn't really get it to work until I decided to stick to the yellows and grey. I went with a five by five block blanket which along with a wide border is a great size for a baby blanket or lap blanket. I joined the squares using single crochet in the back loops only. There's a quick tutorial on how I joined them below. This method works well when you want a solid background look, or you want to have your squares defined or outlined really well. It also is easy to do, uses minimal yarn and is super quick.
If you wondered how I joined my granny squares, I wrote up a quick tutorial below. It's a very simple variation on a single crochet join. If my instructions don't make sense, I'm sure you could find another tutorial somewhere. Just google "single crochet join"! I made up my own border, as I often do, with a mixture of single crochet, half double crochet and double crochet stitches. I just play around until I get something I like!
Once you've made enough granny squares for the size of blanket you want, arrange them in the pattern or order you want the finished blanket to look like. I joined mine in the order of the colours I wanted.
To join the first squares, put them WRONG sides together, and insert your hook into the inside loops of the corner edge of both squares.
You want to try and get as close to the very corner stitch as you can. Join your yarn by yarn over and pulling through. You should have one loop on your hook.
For the next step, again put your hook through the inside loops of both squares. You should have three loops on your hook. Yarn over, and pull through the first two loops only. Now you will have two loops on your hook. Yarn over and pull through both loops, leaving one loop left on the hook.
Continue like this until you get to the end of the squares. If your squares aren't quite even in size like mine were, you may need to skip a few loops on one side or the other so that once you get to the other corner, your squares match up. This is important as otherwise you won't get a neat, straight row of squares.
If you've done it like me, you should end up with a nice slight ridge joining your two squares together.
Hopefully the pictures make more sense that my directions! Now that you have 5 strips of squares, you join the strips in exactly the same way. Again, it helps to try and jimmy your squares so that that all match up neatly corner to corner. The main reason why my squares were not even was because I was using a lot of different weights of yarn. If you're using the same weight yarn for every square, it should be no problem!
It was quite tricky to photograph the blanket to show the lovely yellows, but it's really gorgeous in person!
If you love this blanket, and you're a local Wellingtonian, make sure you head down to the Thorndon Fair on December 7 and visit the stall to snap it up! I'll also have these sweet little baby boots for sale too!
Linking in with Show & Tell and Skip to my Lou!
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