Granny Square Obsession Throw

I started this on a whim with no plan other than to give my shoulder a break from knitting on the shawl I’d been working on pretty intensely. Granny squares are soothing for me, mediative…crochet in general feels that way, I think because of the rhythmic, fluid motion.

I decided to use up my worsted weight scraps first and got around 30 squares. But by then I was all in on this obsession, so I searched my stash for single skeins of worsted and found three (which surprised me that that was all there were, but I apparently tend toward DK instead), so I pulled those for the project. One of a light gray that I’m pretty sure I dyed. One is a LMFA in the 911 Butterfly colorway, and the last is a skein of Spinning Fates that I got years ago at an IK&S, knit into a potato chip scarf which ended up being too short so I ripped it out and now I’m reusing it.

I think I am also going to use the rest of my DK scraps, as, after some playing, I realized there’s only about an 1/8″ difference in square size between worsted and DK using a G hook. (I’d started out with an H for the original worsted squares, but I like the G squares better, so I’ll make them all work.)

My default plan for this is a blanket/throw, but it’ll really depend on how many squares I end up with in total. Right now I’m just enjoying the process of making them.

6/24 – This is going to hibernate for now, as I have other timely projects that need attention.

2/15/24 – In the midst of an office organization, pulled this bag of squares out. Decided to see how many I have: 108. I’m one short for a layout on 12×9 squares.

I have no plan at this point to make enough squares to have a giant blanket, so I think, in an effort to get this finished and out of limbo, I’m going to crochet one more square and then set to putting a solid colored last round on all of the squares and join as I go. It’ll be a reasonable throw sized blanket. Not sure if I want to dye yarn for the edge rounds or just use white/undyed. Also, I need to mix up the squares before I start do the various colors are adequately disbursed throughout.

3/22 – I’m on row 10 of 12, and I have a BAZILLION squares left of a couple of the yarns I used. There’s no way I can spread them out in any kind of even manner at this point, despite trying to use at least two of each in every row for the past several rows.

My solution to this is to make the blanket larger. I’m going to go with 15 rows of 10 squares instead of 12 rows of 9. That means I need to make 43 (I think? I did the math but I don’t have it here) more squares (I was still short one square from my original configuration too). Luckily, a) I love making granny squares and b) I always have a stash of DK and worsted weight scraps just waiting to be used. I could also do some with fingering held double. I’ll need at least one more ball of the Mountain Tweed Merino DK I’m using for the last round and joining but that’s not a problem.

4/19 – I overshot my goal and made 45 more squares. LOL This time, I’ve laid everything out and have the new rows grouped together so that all of the colors are better distributed.

I’ve now added the squares to the left side to make up the new, 10th, column of squares, and I have finished joining 1 1/2 more rows at the top. I think I’m going to join the remainder of row 12 and then row 13 at the top and add rows 14 and 15 to the bottom, again for better color distribution. I just need to remember to do that. LOL

I’m nearly out of my 4th ball of DK tweed that I’m using to join, so I think I’m going to need 2 more balls for the remainder of the joining and for the border. Maybe 3? We’ll see.

6/27 – I finished assembling this blanket (including the weaving in of all ends!) and I put on the border on our trip to Canada…in fact, I finished the border WHILE sitting in the line at the border crossing going into Canada…how’s that for perfect??

I haven’t taken finished pictures nor weighed it for final yarn totals, but I’ll add that stuff when I’m able.

7/2 – Weigh: the throw weighs 1,258 grams. Based on my two leftover squares, which weigh 4 grams each, with 150 squares, the squares come to 600 grams leaving the joining/border yarn making up 658 grams.

All of the joining/border yarn was my Mountain Tweed Merino DK, which is 231 yd to 100 grams or 2.31 yd per gram, so I used 1,520 yds of that.

The squares were a combination of DK and worsted yarns, which at 2.2 to 2.32 yd per gram averages out to 2.25 yd per gram, bringing the squares to an approximate yardage total of 1,353. So yardage for the whole throw is roughly 2,873 yd.

I put in Cozy and Bona Fide just to be able to compute the yardage here in Rav, though there were a lot of other yarns (not mine) used in the blanket.