Granny/Crone Square Blanket

These are a dime-a-dozen, I know.  The quintessential crochet project.  But this turned out so gorgeous, I just had to share it.

A certain big craft store was having an end-of-season yarn sale.  I couldn't resist.  Cleckheaton's Country yarns were all half-price!  So I bought some (24 balls), in the loveliest colours.

I ummed and ahhhed over what to make with them, as you do, when you buy yarn without a project in mind.  In the end, the yarn itself was screaming to be made into a blanket.  And with so many colours, I could try something a bit unique.

No two squares are the same.  There are some with the same colour combinations, but with the colours in different orders.  The overall effect is stunning.

I enlisted D, with his programmer's brain, to help me work out all possible combinations.  I remember from high school maths was that you need to use factorials to work out permutations.  That's the limit of what I remember, however.  Seven colours (not including the cream for edging/joining), each square with four rounds, with no repeats of any colour within a square.  The possibilities seemed endless!  Mathematically, of course, there is a limit.  It turns out that the limit was 840 different combinations.  I didn't have enough yarn to make all of those (nor the money to buy more), so I just included as much variety as I could, to try to even it out.  I ended up with 108 squares, so  9 x 12 to make the blanket.  Then each square was edged with cream, before being sewn together with cream.

All 108 squares, laid out according to the outer colour (not the cream, obviously)

One thing that I did was weave in my ends as I went, at the end of each round.  It really didn't take long, and meant that I was much more motivated to finish the blanket, because I knew I wouldn't have to do all the ends, at the end!  I wove in the ends using a darning needle, feeding it through the back loops of the row.  This meant that they were not only woven in, but also stitched in, making them less likely to come out.

Needle through the back loops

Needle through the back loops

Insert yarn through eye of needle

Pull needle through loops

Tail tucked in, neat and ready for the next round of stitches

I used a large cardboard box to do my blocking on.  It was a packing box for large hanging pictures, so really solid (two thick layers of corrugated cardboard).  My fingers got sore from pushing pins through it so many times!  I had to do it in four batches, owing to not having enough pins to do more at once, but I had a lovely sunny day on my side, so I'd pin them on, spray with water, and then out into the yarn in full sunshine for a couple of hours to dry, and voila, all done in one day!

Enjoying the sunshine!

I joined on the top side of the blanket, so it has that nice ridged effect.  I tried something new with the joining as well.  Previously when I've made crone/granny square blankets,I've joined squares one by one, in lines/rows, and then joined those rows together.  This time, I tested out doing a running row of joins - not fastening off between joins, but stitching from the last corners of the first set, straight into the first corners of the next pair.  Hopefully the photos will help you to understand what I mean!  This uses less yarn, means less joins, less ends that can come loose, and I think was quicker overall.

Top two squares were joined as normal, and then bottom two squares placed next to them and continued stitching

This is how it looks once you've joined a few rows in this fashion

Five rows joined, still more to go!

Then, I simply did the same joining method across the blanket, drawing the unjoined sides together.

The second set of joins crosses over the first as you essentially fill in the gaps

Finally, I edged the whole thing with three rounds in cream following the same crone/granny pattern, ending with one round of dc to give it a neat edge.  It probably needs to be blocked as a whole now, to really neaten it up, but I'll save that for another day.  It looks pretty beautiful now just as it is!

The finished product!

It's Spring here, so we may have to wait until next Autumn rolls around to really appreciate this one, but I am looking forward to snuggling under it when the weather is cool.  In the meantime, I just need to keep it out of reach of a certain cat ;)

PS.  In his spare time, D is now working on a version of his program with more features, to help me in my future blanket-planning endeavours!  What a fab man he is <3