This is only my first attempt (and holy moly, following the pattern was somewhat gruelling), but I think I’ve got the basics down.

Basically, the trick is to mostly work into the back loop only, so that when you go to make the stitches over the the front of the piece, you can work them into the exposed front loops. (You also sometimes do front post stitches).

It makes a very cushy fabric. I haven’t decided what to do with this yet. Despite the fact that it has a LOT of single crochets in it, it’s still pretty stretchy.

One of my guild members has made this and made it the centre of a really neat-looking blanket. So… I might do that. lol

Oh, and here’s the back:

I was born in 1977, but our story begins earlier than that. The details are a little bit fuzzy now, but as best we can figure it, it begins in the early 70’s.

My aunt gave my parents a blanket for their anniversary. It was a granny square blanket, in Christmas colours (I’m not sure if she intended it to be a Christmas blanket, or if she just figured it would go well with their decor; either way, it featured in a lot of our Christmas pictures!).

Mom loved it, and so my aunt taught her how to crochet and gave her the pattern.

Mom made one in those classic 70’s colours: yellow, orange, green, and brown. That blanket had a home on Mom’s rocking chair for as long as I can remember. I loved that blanket; I just thought it was so pretty!

We searched through all of the photo albums, and the packages of non-albumed pictures and couldn’t find a decent picture of it; one that really showed off the handiwork (I know, right?). This is the best we could find:

(Don’t mind the fuzzed-out face of my adorable niece… and that knit blanket on top of it was made by Mom’s Mom. Just to round out this Crafty Family story, Dad’s Mom made beautiful quilts and she made my grade 8 graduation dress)

As luck would have it, after resigning ourselves to this scrap of a picture, Mom thought of a place the blanket could be hiding, and sure enough, we found it in Dad’s workshop!

All I can say is, Mom must have really liked crocheting! I mean, just look at the size of this thing!

Mom also made a baby blanket for one of my brothers, but I’m not sure if she ever made anything else. It may be possible that my brothers and I were a bit of a handful… ^_-

Anyhow, by the time I came along, she seemed to have long stopped crocheting, and by the time I was old enough to wonder how this wonderful blanket was made, she had forgotten how to do it.

After that, I was a woman on a mission, determined to learn how the blanket was made and recreate it. I swore that I’d learn how to crochet so that I could make a granny square blanket.

That was 13 years ago… you may have noticed that the only granny blanket I’ve ever shown here was one big, hole-y square (well, and the Eventually Granny Blanket, but it’s not really the same thing). It’s not that I don’t know how to make a granny blanket; I have, in fact, started many!

But now… now is different, for I have finally found the perfect yarn for it!

(Bernat Satin: Tangerine, Mocha, Fern, and Banana)

I guess the only question now is, what do we do with the old one? You can see from the pictures that it’s falling apart (that thing saw a LOT of love!). I might be able to take off the squares that are ripped and scavenge enough brown yarn off of them to sew the intact pieces back together to make a smaller, but still useable blanket, but I’m not sure where we’d ever use it.

Mom doesn’t have that rocking chair anymore, and the colours don’t go with her decor anymore, but it would be a terrible shame to get rid of it. Any ideas?

What is it? Well, you sign up, are assigned a group, your group rides the TTC (knitting all the while, or possibly crocheting since I’ll be there ^_-) to four yarn shops, and all of the groups meet up at the end to compare purchases and get prizes. At least, that’s the description I’ve been given; this is my first year participating!

I will, of course, be blogging after the fact, to let you know how it went and show you what I bought! In the mean time, you can watch my Twitter feed (or the box over there on the right side of this page) for updates! I’m going to try to take pictures and tell interesting tidbits of stories throughout the day. You don’t need to sign up for Twitter in order to follow me tomorrow, just go to http://twitter.com/fantasticmio and possibly refresh the page as the day progresses, and you shouldn’t miss a thing!

Things kick off at 11am (Eastern)!

Until then, check out the progress on my “Eventually Granny Square” blanket:

It just needs the border and then I’ll have an actual finished object to show off! This one is special in that I don’t know who it’s going to be for yet. Once I’m finished I’ll do up a pattern for those who want to try it at home. If you’re new-ish to crochet and are going to try this, I suggest you learn how to make a traditional Granny Square first. (I do 2ch in the corners, and no ch stitches anywhere else, but this pattern should work just fine with any pattern that has the Granny Square look to it… in fact, ANY square that has the “granny” border on it would work)

Anyhow, it’s not a hard pattern at all; the only part I had to figure out, really, was the valleys between the squares, and it’s actually pretty easy to do. ^_^

This morning I started trying some of the patterns. Now, this is a book made up of crochet border patterns (obviously), and while each pattern also has a “in rows” version, they are primarily meant to be worked in the round. Specifically, around *something*.

I wanted to get started right away, though, and I didn’t want to have to fuss with the math of getting the right number of sc stitches around a motif, or for that matter, wasting time making the motif to begin with (before you say it: most of the motifs I have worked up already are not square, and would have lead to even more math. Time’s a tickin’!)

I tried the first border I had bookmarked (#26), using the “in rows” version and felt that I didn’t really get a good feel for the border as half of the stitches were backwards. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal to me, but this was a stitch of particular interest because I’d never heard of it before.

So… there’s a border I want to try, I want to do it in the round, and flat, and don’t feel like making a motif of some sort first. What did I do?

Thank you chainless foundation sc!

Someone on Twitter asked me once (and I appologize for not answering your question there, I didn’t see it until just recently!), how I come up with design ideas. Apparently the answer is: laziness and happy accidents. ^_^

Ladies and gentlemen, I have mastered the bullion stitch!

Tutorial to come just as soon as I get more batteries!

It was full of happiness:

See that yellow-ish yarn peeking through on the left side of the box? I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with that yarn… it was cheap, and I like self-striping yarn, and I got 10 balls of it, just in case. (I also got 10 balls of a pink-and-white striping yarn of the same type).

Then it hit me, when I was almost finished that green-and-cream dishcloth from the last post: this yarn would look fantastic in the swirly-hexagon motif!

So, I started the dishcloth pattern again, but with 30ch to begin (instead of 15 for the dishcloths). I did try 15 sts originally, but I found that each wedge was *almost* a single colour, and that wouldn’t really look nice, in my opinion, so I decided to go big.

Here is the result, pinned out (colours a bit off) :

Here’s a close-up, it’s a bit fuzzy, but the colour is more accurate:

And it’s quite drapey!

(Yarn is Bella DK Tapestry, using a 6mm hook)

This might end up being a Christmas present, too… we’ll see!

I’ve talked about gauge before. I hope we all know now that even if you get gauge with one dye lot, you might not with the next. Different colours of yarn sometimes have different gauges, even if they are otherwise the same yarns… even in variegated and self-striping yarns (I’m looking at you, Bernat Baby Coordinates White)

The other day I made this:

It’s for my cousin; she likes handmade dishcloths and her kitchen colours are blue, green, and yellow.

I also made this for her:

(it’s actually more blue than grey in person… it’s supposed to look like denim)

And then this green-and-cream one:

I finished that last one on the commute home and it wasn’t until I stacked it on top of the other two that I noticed this:

All three dishcloths were made using Bernat Handicrafter Cotton, each with a 6mm hook, each exactly the same pattern.

Luckily, gauge doesn’t always matter. ^_^

(P.S. this post documents the first finished Christmas gifts for 2010. That’s right, you heard me!)

And yet, I’m still not clear on what a Granny Square is.

Some would say it’s a very specific pattern made up of groups of 3 double crochet stitches worked into the spaces of a previous round, in the shape of a square, like this:

Some would say that it’s the pattern of 3dc stitches that matters, and that any shape still counts as a Granny Square:

Some would say that what defines a Granny Square is that it is a square crocheted in the round, like this:

Some would say that all that matters is that it be a crocheted square…

or that it be a motif, of any description, that is repeated… (I can’t find the giant granny square blanket I made when I first learned to crochet, so here’s what I found doing a Google Image Search)

And so I ask you, what IS a Granny Square?

Start with a motif:

Make a second motif, and prepare to join on the last round:

On the corners, do a cluster of 3dc, and ch1. Remove the hook, insert it in the hole in the corner of the first motif, and then back through the working loop:

Ch1:

Finish the corner with a cluster of 3dc:

Remove the hook, insert it in the next hole in the first motif, then back in the working loop:

Pull the loop through the hole (but don’t pull the loop too much out of shape!) :

And continue as normal, doing this join in each hole along the common side.

Here’s what it looks like finished:

It’s not perfectly flat, but not as huge of a ridge as the last joining method I used.

Here’s what it looks like when you use the same colour:

Then it was many:

Then it was suspiciously familiar:

A slight side-tracking into the joining method:

And now it’s revealed!

Before adding the handle:

And finished!

(well, maybe… I’m debating adding some blue along the tops of the hexes… we’ll see!)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my Settlers of Catan bag!